


Citizens of the End of the World

by 14CombatGeishas



Series: Misadventures of the SI-5's Best Agents [3]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Asexuality, BFFs being BFFs, Blood, China, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Found Family, Gen, Hostage Situations, Hurt/Comfort, Jacobi POV, Maxwell POV, Maxwell and Jacobi are vaguely horrific people, Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, Queerplatonic Relationships, SI-5, Trans Character, Violence, high-jinx and shenanigans, mentions of child abuse, mistreatment of endangered species, weapons...lots of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 70,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9264116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14CombatGeishas/pseuds/14CombatGeishas
Summary: "How did we get out of China?" "The Bible.  We pretended to be missionaries."  Here’s what happened when Jacobi and Maxwell were on that fateful Chinese mission.Plus, Father Kepler, Jacobi the teacher's pet, the cool explode-y part, Jacobi's extremely awkward phase, Willie Pete, poking the bear, a chicken truck, a near-duck experience, the second-worst coffee, Marie Antoinette, being a jackass hurts, awkwardly tonguing sauropods, and scorpion locusts.





	1. Alana Maxwell & Daniel Jacobi; Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Matt (drakanekurashiki)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Matt+%28drakanekurashiki%29).



> Takes place in the same continuity as "I'm Your Savior" between chapter 9 and the epilogue. But you don't have to read _that_ to read _this_. It is January of 2015.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zamyn-Üüd, Mongolia

 

Somehow they made it over the border to Zamyn-Üüd with time to spare.  There wasn’t _much_ time, but they made it.

“Well,” said Jacobi, thickly, “we aren’t dead.”

“Yep,” said Maxwell, and she winced from the pain.

Maxwell held the icepack to her swollen lip.   She could feel the thin line of stitches holding her wound together like the seam of an overstuffed doll.  Every part of her body was screaming.  Every bump and bruise called out for her attention.  Everything that wasn’t actively throbbing ached instead.  The wound in her side under her reddened bandages shot a throbbing lightening bolt through her nerves every time she moved.  Jacobi had his eyes closed, arm — well, his _good_ arm — crossed over his stomach, presumably over the bruises on his kidneys.  The robotic arm still wasn’t working; out of  power, but they’d lost the charger when that building came down on them.  It hung limply at his side, gloved and open palmed.  He had a bruise in full blossom on one side of his face. The gash in his cheek was held shut with butterfly bandages.  His spare, spare pair of glasses were cracked and sitting in his pocket.

“Miss Banting?  Mr. Best?” asked the calm voice of the nun who thought she had found not two corporate black-ops agents but two fellow missionaries who encountered some very bad luck.  Jacobi opened his eyes, or at least the one that wasn’t swollen shut, and glanced over at Maxwell.  Maxwell straightened and winced from the pain.  “Father Julian Volta is here for you.”

Maxwell and Jacobi found each other’s eyes, but the confusion lasted only a second.  The name was unfamiliar, but the form in the doorway was not.  Tall, broad, disgustingly handsome, square jawed, graying blond hair peeking out from below a baseball cap, and the coldest blue eyes any man ever had.  Warren Kepler.  “Liz!  Matt!  Thank God you’re alive,” he said in an unfamiliar voice.  Playing his role.  He sounded relieved, somehow conveying sleepless anxiety in his tone, but below the cap he had pulled low over his face his eyes betrayed a far darker sentiment.   _Thank God you’re alive, so I can kill you myself_.  “Look at you two!  What happened?”

“A lot,” Maxwell groaned, hauling herself to her feet and helping Jacobi do the same.

“Maj—Father,” Jacobi quickly corrected himself, “we were mugged in, uh…” Maxwell saw a momentary look of terror cross Jacobi’s bruised face, trying to remember where she had said earlier.

“It doesn’t matter now, Matt,” he gave Jacobi a pat on the back that nearly sent him toppling over.  “You can tell me about it on the way back to the compound.  You, too, Liz.  Let’s go!  God Bless you, Sister Mary,” he waved vaguely to her as he shoved Maxwell and Jacobi out the door with perhaps more force than was strictly necessary.  He wrapped an arm around each of their shoulders as they limped out. It was a mismatched, lopsided gait as Maxwell was more than a foot shorter than Kepler.  

There was a car waiting outside, a nondescript four-door.  Kepler removed his arm from Jacobi’s shoulder to crack it open.  “In,” he rumbled, practically throwing Maxwell into the backseat.  She crumpled across the interior and winced.  She straightened with Jacobi’s help as he piled in next to her.  She reached across him and closed the door; his non-functioning arm was on that side.  Maxwell groaned.  She and Jacobi looked (and felt) like two kids being dragged back home by their father.  They’d gotten in trouble and now dad was picking them up.  They were sitting awkwardly, sheepishly.  Jacobi was practically folding in on himself out of shame.  Teacher’s pet.   Kepler yanked off his priest’s collar, then slammed on the gas.  The car kicked forward with a strength and speed she hadn’t expected.  

There was a long silence.  

“Uh…sir?” said Jacobi.

“Did I ask you to speak?” Kepler snapped with such force it nearly knocked Maxwell back.

“No, sir!” Jacobi swallowed.  “I just thought…I just thought you’d want a report?”

“I assure you there is nothing further from what I want.  I’ll _need_ a report from you two _idiots_ before we get back to Canaveral, but right now I want you to figure out how to explain yourselves in the way that is least likely to result in my having an aneurysm, flaying you alive, and turning your skins into a new interior for the car you are _presently bleeding all over_.”

“Yes, sir,” Jacobi said weakly.  He glanced over at Maxwell.  She passed the icepack to Jacobi who put it to his bruise.  That would definitely take some thinking.  

 


	2. Kathryn Johnson & Hyun-woo Kim; Goddard Futuristics R&D

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sinuiju, North Korea  
> 

 

Only a few days before that long, silent car ride in Mongolia Jacobi and Maxwell had been in North Korea, far more energetic and far less bruised.

They were pulling a double-header: setting up a supercomputer in Sinuiju and then completing an arms deal across the Chinese border in the rural Hebei.  They had both several tons of ballistic tech and an AI so large it had been shipped in pieces over the last eight months. It was going to be a long trip.  Most set-ups could be done in a day or two; arms sales varied, according to Jacobi, and the ones on which Maxwell had tagged along offered no proof to the contrary.  Smashing the two together meant at least four days, barring something going horribly wrong.

There was a reason for the joint mission.  Maxwell was needed in North Korea, Jacobi in China, but each needed the other for their half of the trip.  As often seemed to be the case, Jacobi and Maxwell complemented each other.  They helped each other and each filled in what the other lacked.  They made perfect partners, and in this case it was a little more literal than usual.  They were arming a rebel group in China and Jacobi’s inability to speak Mandarin was only surpassed by his inability to speak any other Chinese language.  Maxwell had picked up Mandarin at Cambridge.

(“I had to fill a requirement and European languages are too easy,” Maxwell explained.

“Oh, _naturally_ ,” Jacobi answered, rolling his eyes.)

But for some reason she had never been able to wrap her tongue around Korean, and Jacobi had learned Korean as a child.

(“My halmoni used to talk to me and my cousins in Korean like we knew what the Hell she was saying.  Eventually, things stuck.  It ended up being real handy in the end since my parents used to think they could talk around me in Korean.  They didn’t realize I knew everything they were talking about for _years_.”

“Which is why you sound like a Midwestern American pretending he knows Korean,” Maxwell said.

“Exactly!  Because I _am_ a Midwestern American pretending I know Korean,” Jacobi agreed.)

Maxwell liked it when things worked out like this, when they could go on missions together.  They were paired off often enough; they were well-trusted, well-worn, extremely skilled.  They were favorites of Major Kepler and even perhaps of some value to Mr. Cutter himself.  When they were partners, they were really _partners_ – something deeper than coworkers, deeper even than most friends.  Platonic to the core, but with a stronger connection than any romance she had ever heard described.  

Reading the dossier section on North Korea was enlightening for Maxwell.  Afterwards, she thought she might know more about the country than nearly any other outsider in the world.  With the exception, of course, of people like Jacobi, who had made this trip before.  He didn’t even bother reading the North Korean dossier, but instead used it to keep the sun out of his eyes as he dozed on the flight over.  

Along with the usual gear they were armed with fake identities, one for each of them for each mission and a handful of backups in case of an emergency.  The Chinese identities needed to be different from the Korean ones, since the resistance group they were arming thought they were dealing with another company, Hypatia Technologies, one of Goddard Futuristics many fronts.  

She thought the others were superfluous: they had never needed to use a backup identity before.  They got things done and they did them well.  Jacobi also seemed annoyed by it – as if someone was doubting him – but he kept them stuffed in the secret pouch at the bottom of his bag. There were a handful of passports and driver’s licenses from a handful of states; none being the two they actually hailed from – as if anyone would associate these two with the long-forgotten and, as far as most of the world knew, long-dead Daniel Jacobi and Alana Maxwell.  

When they landed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Jacobi rose, stretched, and threw his backpack over one shoulder with a grunt.  Maxwell followed, slinging her bag on with a touch more dignity before shoving him toward the exit.  It was a gray winter day.  A glance at her GF watch told Maxwell it was 20° Fahrenheit and she zipped her jacket a little higher.  Under normal circumstances, Maxwell would have opted for something puffier, warmer but less dignified, comfort over appearances, but they were here with fake identities and fake respect for stupid dress codes.  Jacobi and Maxwell were dressed cleanly and professionally, far more so than either of them usually would.  The costume version of scientists.  Scientists who wore suits and ties and lab coats without soy sauce stains.  

Maxwell glanced over at Jacobi and, as usual when he was dolled up like this, fought back a laugh.  In his usual element, Jacobi wore t-shirts, either jeans or the multi-pocketed black pants he wore on missions, and either heavy black combat boots or ancient sneakers.  He usually had at least one firearm strapped somewhere to his person, even if you couldn’t see it.  The old RIA 1911 rarely left his side.  Sometimes his t-shirts didn’t have anything printed on them.  If you were really lucky the pants wouldn’t have any chemical stains.  Really, Maxwell wasn’t any better.  Oversized sweatshirts and t-shirts.  Pants chosen for pocket size.  Hair only vaguely brushed in order to snag it in a ponytail.  Sneakers she bought before she even joined Goddard Futuristics.  She put her own comfort over the expectations of others. One of Jacobi’s coworkers once referred to them both as “MIT Schlub,” a phrase Jacobi took dangerously personally and Maxwell thought was hilarious and wore with pride.  

Before they left Cape Canaveral that morning, Major Kepler, a man who was never anything short of immaculate, gave the two of them a look-over.  “You two clean up pretty good,” he decided, as he always did whenever Jacobi and Maxwell were forced into anything above “casual,” as if Kepler was hoping they might take the hint.  Maxwell thought he might be right, but that wasn’t enough to make her attempt to dress better.

Today, Jacobi wore a navy suit and a blue-and-black striped tie, neither of which Maxwell thought he actually owned, but were well fitted to him.  The tie peaked out over the top of a cable sweater.  His dress shoes were polished.  The sweater under the suit jacket showed no holster bulge (but that didn’t mean the gun wasn’t there, Jacobi was very good at hiding weapons). He would look like an entirely different person if it wasn’t for that familiar irked expression and posture that managed to wordlessly convey a perpetual annoyance at the universe in general, as if it owed him something and he knew it would never pay-up.  He was tall and slightly skinny, always clean-shaven.  His hair was jet black and curly.  His coloring was warm.  His eyes were dark – darker than brown, nearly as dark as his hair – narrow, and heavy-lidded.  He had a heart-shaped face and wore horn-rimmed glasses.  His eyesight wasn’t terrible, but it was just bad enough that the Air Force hadn’t allowed him to fly for them.

Maxwell wore a black pencil-skirt and tights (although she had lobbied hard for leggings and was presently freezing her ass off because she hadn’t been allowed them).  She had on an itchy baby-blue sweater that she could not wait to throw away, under a black blazer itself under a down coat.  Her curly brown hair was usually very messy, but had recently been trimmed and teased, made manageable for this mission.  As usual, she had drawn the line at makeup.  She did not have the time or the energy to put into something that pointless.

Right on time, to the minute, they were picked up at the airport by a black limo with tinted windows.  The driver’s side window unrolled with a hum.  Jacobi stepped forward and pulled his fake Goddard ID card from the inside pocket of his jacket.  He held it up for them to read, beside a photo taken two days ago. It read, “ _Kim, Hyun-woo.  Computer Research and Development_ .”  Maxwell followed suit, showing an ID that introduced her as “ _Johnson, Kathryn.  AI Research and Development._ ”  No mention of the Strategic Intelligence Division.  Nothing secretive, or any more secretive than any other Western company making deals with the North Korean government.  These were nice, clean aliases that implied and revealed nothing.  Squeaky clean and shiny new people.  “Tabula Rasa,” as Jacobi had said when he handed the badge to her on the plane.

The man inside read their badges and doors audibly unlocked.  A second man, who had been sitting in the passenger’s seat, stepped out for a moment.  He introduced himself with a similar badge.  Maxwell couldn’t read it, but he greeted them in English as Lee Young-Ho.  Jacobi told her later he was a representative for the Party and he was watching them to make sure they didn’t overstep their boundaries.  Jacobi and he bowed to each other as they shook hands and Maxwell did the same.  A short introduction.  A few words.  Then they climbed into the backseat.  

Everything went smoothly, quickly, easily.  Shockingly easily. Despite requiring a chaperone, no one seemed particularly worried about the Americans in the backseat.  It annoyed her that Jacobi wasn’t in any way surprised.  Maxwell pawed through her bag, fidgeting, watching the cityscape zip by on the way to the compound where she would install Clio, North Korea’s first AI.  

Jacobi sat beside her reading _The Andromeda Strain_ ; paperback, dog-eared, and broken-spined, like most of the books he owned.  Most of the books he _touched_.  It was why Maxwell stopped loaning them to him long ago.  Besides, she was more of a fantasy gal, and Jacobi ate up thrillers and horror novels like candy.  It bothered him when Maxwell pointed out scientific inconsistencies, so she did it constantly.  

“They’re being really nice to us,” Maxwell whispered to him.

“You realize Mr. Lee speaks English, right?” Jacobi muttered without looking up.

“This is North Korea.  It’s run by an emotional chest-thumping man-child.  Shouldn’t they hate us for being American?”  Maxwell asked.  She was on edge.  She was afraid of making a mistake, afraid of things going wrong.  She had taken things so much more seriously after what happened in Colombia, when not taking the job seriously cost Jacobi an arm and nearly his life.  The fact things weren’t happening the way she expected made her extremely uneasy.  

Yes, there were checkpoints, as Maxwell expected, but they were waved through quickly and easily.  She expected walls of resistance, but everything seemed quiet and dull. She had thought they would face more than just friendly smiles and nods.  She had thought they would need to supply more than laminated badges with the company logo.  

Jacobi actually laughed.  “Are you joking?  We’re not here as Americans. We’re here as Goddard Futuristics and we are bringing them a brand new toy that’s going to make Seoul _very_ jealous.”  He paused, then said, “We’re citizens of the world, Johnson.”

“Or the end of it,” Maxwell smiled.  

Jacobi grinned; clearly he liked that line, “Yeah, that.  Citizens of the end of the world.  So don’t worry about it.  We’re safe.”

“Was it like this when you were here last time?”

“Yeah, pretty much.  Me and the Major were in Pyongyang, but,” he shrugged, “still the North Korea thing.”

“Any advice for a nervous partner, Kim?” she asked.

“Don’t ask too many questions, nod along whenever I do, and _don’t whisper so much_ ,” Jacobi said.  With the last four words his dark eyes flicked towards the rear view mirror visible through the limo’s divider.  Maxwell subtly did the same.  Lee’s eyes found hers.  She smiled in a friendly way and sat back in her seat, away from Jacobi’s ear.

“Are you well, Dr. Johnson?” Lee asked in his halting English.  

“A little tired and a little embarrassed that I don’t speak any Korean,” Maxwell answered, playing up her character.  “I’m very sorry.”

The official chuckled.  “It’s alright.  Between Dr. Kim and I, you have no reason to worry.”

“Thank you,” she said sheepishly.  She was quiet for a little while, looking out the window.  When she looked over at Jacobi again, he was back to reading.

She glanced at the page he was on.  She had very little knowledge of the book beyond the fact that it was written by Michael Crichton, what she gleaned from the part of the back cover not concealed by the bent back front, and the page Jacobi was presently on.  Regardless, she muttered, “Viruses don’t work that way.”

“What do you want now?” Jacobi sighed.  

“Do you think we’ll see a concentration camp?” Maxwell whispered.  Maxwell knew about those, not just in the media but because of a story she had heard from her father about a group of Christians held in one.  Pastor Maxwell had had a lot to say about the “slant-eyed heathens” who locked  them up.  Since it came from her father’s lying mouth, she wasn’t sure where the Fire and Brimstone ended and reality began, but from everything she had heard from other sources, the stories were essentially the same, minus her father’s persistent racism.  (Oh, he would have _hated_ that Alana Maxwell’s best friend in the universe was not only of East Asian descent, but also Jewish.)

“Do you plan on being a hero?” Jacobi asked over the cover of his book.

“Hell no,” Maxwell managed to keep her voice down and swallow her incredulous laugh.

“Then we’re fine. How’s Clio doing?” he inquired, turning his attention back to the page.

“Her final pieces should get there just as we do,” Maxwell said, consulting her touch screen.  

The rest of the drive was largely uneventful, too.  Jacobi slumped down in the backseat, putting his long legs up on the dividing wall, feet leaving dents in the cushioning.  Maxwell alternated between looking out the window and watching Clio’s transport’s GPS signal as the barge drifted up the Yalu River.

The car stopped in front of a large round structure, a building that was supposed to be beautiful and imposing, but was mostly just a shell.  A testament to over-ambition.  It gave the impression that if you pushed against it, the whole thing would come tumbling down around you, breaking apart like gingerbread.  Maxwell felt like she was in a  _Fallout_ set in the Far East rather than the United States.  There were three officials approaching them – two smiling men and a woman in clean, pressed military uniforms.

Lee introduced Jacobi and Maxwell as Kim and Johnson.  Jacobi greeted the officials with a tight professional smile, a bow, and offered his right hand.  Both his hands were covered by fashionable leather gloves, concealing the difference between the olive skin of his left hand and silver and gold carbon fiber of his right.  The Teel Mission in Colombia had taken Jacobi’s arm to the bicep, but Maxwell built Jacobi a replacement: she called it  _Rocobi_ , and it was presently version 3.0.  It was a near perfect replacement for the arm he lost.  After greeting the officials Jacobi glanced at Maxwell who quickly did the same.  They all examined their new associates’ IDs.  

Hyun-woo Kim.  Goddard was really going out of its way to highlight Jacobi’s Korean heritage. She wondered if it was to put the North Korean buyers more at ease, and if it was successful.  Maybe giving him such a Korean name detracted from his less Korean features, like the texture of his hair (from his Ashkenazi Jewish roots) or his atrocious accent.  Maybe a Korean-American was more trustworthy than a generic white European-American like Maxwell.  She wasn’t sure when Jacobi’s actual Korean relatives left Korea, if it was unified at the time.  But apparently whatever backstory had been concocted for Hyun-woo Kim was successful, as it had been in his previous visit here. Either that, or they were just eager to receive Clio.  Jacobi spoke to the officials in Korean.

The building couldn’t have been that old, but it felt it, or _some_ of it did.  It was in a strange state of limbo; aspects in vague disrepair, others bright and shiny and new; some things neglected, other things at maximized efficiency.  They rode a wide, carpeted elevator to the basement.  When the doors opened they were in a room nearly as wide as the building itself.  It was huge, cold, and dim.  Between the high ceilings and the tile floor was a cross-shaped catwalk.  Workers were already gathering Clio’s parts in preparation for her construction.  A man in a hardhat said something to one of the uniformed officials, a Captain.  After the exchange Jacobi leaned over to Maxwell and muttered, “Last barge just docked.”

“Good,” Maxwell answered.  Her fear mingled with annoyance, as it was wont.  She was never sure if she was more annoyed at herself for her anxiety or the source of her discomfort.

Maxwell and Jacobi spent the rest of the day and long into the night on the catwalk, Maxwell giving orders on constructing Clio and Jacobi translating them into Korean.  There was a pause every time he didn’t know a word.  She could see it coming a mile off.  He would lift the megaphone, stop, scowl, lower it again, curse under his breath, pull out his smartphone, and open the translator app.  Here she would throw in a snide remark as he fumbled for a few seconds, megaphone under his arm.  Once he found the word, he would give the command in slightly more halting tones than before.  

Eventually, Jacobi had had to drag Maxwell away, “for _my_ sake.  My feet, vocal cords, and limited knowledge of the language are killing me.”

They weren’t housed far away and Maxwell dragged Jacobi back early in the morning.  He was still tired, blinking blearily, but Maxwell was wide awake, too excited for fatigue.  More than once Jacobi yawned into the megaphone.  But the early start paid off; by noon they were done.  Done but for the finishing touch, the final piece, seemingly a simple male/female connector that would allow the entire machine to turn on.  Goddard Futuristics always left a single piece out, randomly determined, and far more than it seemed.  It always contained a program that allowed GF to keep track of their supercomputers and what they were being used for.

With much pomp and circumstance, Maxwell walked across the huge chamber to the processor.  She cracked open a panel and bent down, practically climbing inside.  She attached the final piece, closed the panel, and rose.  She leaned across the panel and, with both hands, threw a huge switch.  She hammered rapidly on the primary keyboard.  A few screens turned on, brightening, binary code grew across the screen.  It was like the birth of a child, but better: the birth of a complete being – like Athena from Zeus’s head, Clio came from Maxwell’s.  She punched in some commands on another panel.  There was a hum.  Fuzz.  Red lights in Clio’s optic sensors blinked on in this room and simultaneously did so everywhere in the complex.  Then the final few command functions and start ups.  A brief musical score accompanied it.  On the largest screen the Goddard Futuristics logo lit up on a black star field,  _Goddard Futuristics_ in  a smart modern font, the two words separated by a red line.  Maxwell waited.  In testing back in the U.S., it took Clio five minutes to find sentience.  It was about the average time to reach self-awareness.  Maxwell set a timer on her watch and eyed a readout cataloging Clio’s first thoughts.  Behind her she heard Jacobi converse with the female officer.  He was probably explaining the pause.  People expected AI’s to just start, as if life was something easily comprehended or explained.  It took humans  _three years_ to gain any sort of understanding and they spent the rest of their lives debating it, AI’s took only minutes. 

“Good morning, Clio, how are you?” Maxwell asked when her watch beeped, glancing from the readout to the closest of Clio’s optic sensors.  The camera swiveled to face Maxwell.  She gave the AI an affectionate smile.  

On the panel in front of Maxwell, Clio’s blue audio readout spiked to life. “Hello, Doctor Johnson.”  She sounded cheery, but her voice was slow with consideration, “I think… I think I’m doing quite well, thank you.”

“What is your unit number and designation?” Maxwell asked, her fingers lying flat across the keys, not typing anything but ready to do so, if need be.  

“Unit 689. Clio,” the AI answered obediently.  

“Your location?”

“Sinuiju, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

“Your utility?”

“To serve as databank, maintenance, assistant, to provide maintenance and aid to Seojjog Laboratory in all other ways I can.”

“Excellent,” said Maxwell, not that she expected anything less.  “Adjust language to Korean.”

Jacobi detached himself from the officials and came briskly up to Maxwell’s side.  He stopped beside her and shot her a brief smile.  He repeated her questions in Korean.  Clio repeated her answers in her new tongue.  When they were done the officials applauded.  

“Now smile for your adoring public,” Jacobi muttered to Maxwell.  She turned with him and they both bowed deeply.  Maxwell looked over at Jacobi’s stoic expression and nearly started to laugh.  She knew he was bored out of his mind.  AI’s were her thing, explosives were his.

Maxwell handed over the proverbial keys.  She and Jacobi were returned to the airport. In their absence another Goddard vessel had landed, this one unmarked.  The equipment for phase 2 of their mission arrived: weaponry for the Chinese rebel group…the…Maxwell consulted her dossier to make sure she had this right…The People’s Coalition for Freedom, in Hebei. They watched as plain-clothes GF employees hooked up inconspicuous flatbeds and loaded inconspicuous crates into inconspicuous trucks.  Jacobi and Maxwell changed their clothes at the airport, out of the oppressive business nonsense, but, unfortunately, not back into their usual clothes. Into, instead, the costumes for the tourists she and Jacobi would play this evening.

Maxwell was nowhere near so worried about traveling in China. Totalitarianism had degrees and North Korea made her feel nearly as uncomfortable as Mr. Cutter’s office did.

“At least the hard part’s over,” Maxwell said as she and Jacobi piled into the windowless trailer of one of the trucks.  They sat among decoy crates of iron ore and coal.  In some, but not all, were dozens of explosives, weapons, and kinds of ammunition buried below the metal and coal.  It was back here that Maxwell and Jacobi would ride into China.  

Jacobi raised his eyebrows. “Uh, this wasn’t the hard part,” he said.

“We’re going into China,” she pointed out. “They’re playing Civ with the rest of the world and not…” she thought hard but couldn’t think of a better analogy than, “Crazy Monopoly.”  

“Okay,” Jacobi slowly said, unslinging his backpack, “continuing your _real_ dumb metaphor, we just had to deal with Crazy Monopoly’s banker.  We didn’t have to follow any of the rules.  He just slipped us some money for a piece of real estate we didn’t need. Hang on.” He unclipped his transmitter from his belt and said, “Alpha 1, this is Nitramide, we’re all set back here.  You ready?”

“Roger, Nitramide, and affirmative. We are ready to roll,” came the response over Jacobi’s transmitter.  

“Then let’s do this thing.  Over and out,” Jacobi said.

“Wilco, over and out.”

The convoy started up, and they rumbled out.  

Jacobi looked back at Maxwell and picked up where he left off.  “Using a less stupid metaphor, no one can touch you when you’re cozying up with Big Brother.  Where we’re going now, he’s only a little less pissy, but we’re making nice-nice with some idiots who don’t know to just shut up.”

“Can you not say ‘cozying up’ and ‘making nice-nice’?  It’s creepy.”

“Now I’m going to say them all the time.”

“Why do I even try?” Maxwell sighed, digging through her bag for her touch screen as the truck jerked along.  

“I mean it, Maxwell,” Jacobi said.  When she looked up his expression was surprisingly serious,“This is where things are going to get hard.  Remember, Goddard Futuristics doesn’t play favorites.  They don’t care who they arm.  It’s whoever can pay. In this case, the people who can pay aren’t friends with Big Brother.  And this is the first time they’re making enough noise for him to notice them.  He isn’t going to like it.  Just now?” he gestured with his head towards the back of the truck, indicating Sinuiju, “We were being protected by the biggest bullies on their shitty, shitty playground. Day after tomorrow?  We’ll be with the scrappy underdog hero types who are always _right_ but die before the end of the movie.  Cue dramatic music and the white protagonist shedding a single tear at their untimely and brutal deaths. If we wanna get out of this alive, you gotta think logically.  Okay?”

“Okay, okay,” Maxwell conceded.  After a few moments of silence she asked, “Does that make us the white protagonists?”

“Uh, Hell no?  I’m not white.  I’m Jewish and Asian. I get to die horribly and/or be a samurai, because Hollywood’s super racist like that.”

“Or a punchline.  Do you have one of those black hats with the curls?”

“Black hats with…do you mean payots?  Like the haircuts that Orthodox men have?  They’re not on the hat!” Jacobi said incredulously, laughing at her ignorance.

“They were on the hat in _Robin Hood: Men in Tights_.”

“Ah, yes, the acclaimed documentary,” he answered sarcastically.

“So am I the white protagonist?” Maxwell asked.

“No, you’re white, sure, but you’re a woman, and Hollywood’s super sexist too.  So you get to be…” he tisked his tongue and sized her up.  “Either the love interest or the unobtainable ice queen hacker?”

“I’ll take the latter,” said Maxwell with a look of disgust.  “Either way I guess we both die before the end of the movie.”

Jacobi shook his head.  “Only if we mess up.  If we do our jobs right, we’re not even really in the flick. We’re the special effects guys.  Behind the scenes.  Making sure everything explodes the way it’s supposed to.”

Maxwell grinned. “Keying in the CGI and out the green screen. Making sure the viewers only see what they’re supposed to.”

“Hell yeah,” Jacobi said.  Their hands met for a fist bump.  “Now, gimme your ID.”

“Getting rid of it already?” Maxwell asked, groping in her bag for Kathryn Johnson’s passport and Goddard card.  

Jacobi was right.  One thing that Maxwell learned working for Goddard Futuristics was that they _didn’t_ play favorites.  Here they were on their way to arm a Chinese rebel group with stars in its eyes, and doing it literally two days after giving the North Korean government an advanced AI.  There never seemed to be much rhyme or reason to those Goddard backed.  Jacobi said it boiled down to who paid, but Maxwell thought it was something larger and more sinister than that.  Goddard Futuristics didn’t need money.  They didn’t need power, either.  She wasn’t sure what they were lacking, but God help the rest of the world once Cutter got it.

“Why not?  We’re not getting out of the truck ’til we’re in China and as far as the North Koreans know we’re in a plane headed back to the U.S. right now, sipping our Capitalist champagne and never realizing how lucky we are to have come so close to their glorious leader.” He removed his own fake documents from his bag and put them on the crate beside him.

“Mm, we may have even stepped on the same floor tiles,” Maxwell nodded in phony awe, handing off the documents.

“Maybe we even got to sit in a chair that once had his ass-print on it,” Jacobi agreed with the same mock reverence.

He took his Zippo windproof lighter from his bag and flicked back the lid.  It was silver with a grenade made of black metal pieces set in its side. It was battered and dented, far more so than Zippo would admit their lighters could get.  But having seen the paces Jacobi put his lighter through, Maxwell thought Zippo should hire him as their spokesman.  He removed Maxwell’s ID from the vinyl case and tossed that back to her, she caught it easily.  A single flick brought the lighter to life and he held both passport and ID in the flame. He watched them smolder with intense interest until the photos glowed, blackened, twisted; until Maxwell’s likeness disappeared.  He tossed them to the metal floor of the truck and stomped the fire out under his heavy black boot. He repeated the procedure with his own fake documents – same transfixed gaze at the fire, same grind of his boot. Predictably, he left the ashy remains where they were.

“Should we check in with them?” Maxwell asked, meaning the rebels.  

Jacobi sighed, “Probably for the best.” He played with the transmitter, put in place all the scramblers and coders.  Not a soul could find the signal unless they were a Maxwell-level hacker.  She would know, she designed the augmentations herself.  After Jacobi made sure everything was in place, he sent out the transmission, “PC this is Nitramide, come in.  This is Nitramide, do you read me PC?”

A pause filled with white noise.  Then, “This is PC, we read you Nitramide.”  Maxwell recognized the voice on the other side of the transmission.  It was Huang Zhonghao who had acted as their contact, the link between The Pe –  Maxwell glanced at her copy of the dossier, that was right, The People’s Coalition of Freedom — it was such a generic name it kept slipping her mind — and the imagined Hypatia Technologies.  He was also the second-in-command of the whole group.  “Is everything going according to plan?”

Jacobi winced, looking at Maxwell.  Secure channel or no, Huang should have been more vague.  Jacobi tried to save it, “Yeah, Sophia and Albert will be there with presents.  You’ll like ‘em.  I promise.  They’ll meet up with you in a silver car, plate number ‘Ji Golf-two-Delta-six-two-niner.”  Jacobi said the character slowly, trying very hard to get the pronunciation correct.  It wasn't, but it was close enough that Maxwell assumed he was understood.  

“Okay, hang on, Yongming…” he turned his head away from the mouthpiece on the last word and repeated the number in Mandarin, “Jì G-èr-D-liù-èr-jiu.”

“Who’s there with you?” Jacobi asked, frowning.  

“Li Yongming,” Huang provided.  Jacobi knew him, too.  He thought they may have spoken once, at the very least he had heard the name before and understood him to be a middle-aged and stern sort of man.  Practical, at least compared to the fresh-faced idealists usually on the other end of the transmission.

“Alright.  Keep this on the DL, okay?” Jacobi stressed. “Keep it quiet,” Jacobi specified after a silence indicated the slang didn’t translate.  

“Of course.  None but those closest know your friends are coming to visit.”

“They’re anxious to see you, PC, over and out.”

“Yes, us too.  Over and out.”

Jacobi turned off the transmitter and dismantled it.  He clipped the transmitter itself to his belt and put away the attachments.  He pulled out his dossier again.  Maxwell consulted Clio’s readings from her tablet.  After a little while she deactivated the screen and glanced up at Jacobi.  He was hunched over the dossier with an intense look of concentration, eyebrows pulled low.  He held a pen in his artificial fingers, spinning it as he scowled over the page.  

Jacobi was planning.  Maxwell could see it in his eyes.  They had that glint that only very explosive objects could provide.  He had the dossier open to the pages listing the weaponry they had for the resistance group.

Before the final sale, Jacobi got to put on a show for the buyers.  He would set off one of everything to show what they were capable of.  And Jacobi would make sure the Coalition knew just what they were getting.  He had flipped past the full list and leafed quickly to what he would be allowed to work with tomorrow night.  

 

 _ Demo. Supplies: _

_Viduus High-Explosive Anti-Armor Rocket_

_Spes Shoulder-launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon_

_Messor Land Mine (x6)_

_Cronus Watch-Trigger Time Bomb_

_Vesta Fuel-Air Bomb_

_Fulgora Flame Assault Shoulder Weapon (Napalm B)_

_Cacus Incendiary Grenade (x6)_

_Mephitis Fragmentation Grenade (x6)_

_Diana Incendiary Cluster Munition_

_Libitina Anti-Personnel Cluster Munition_

_Mania Flamethrower_

_Mercury Designated Marksman Rifle_

_Oraculum Sniper Rifle_

_Justitia Assault Rifle_

_Honos Surface-to-Surface Missile_

 

Jacobi kept writing little notes in the margins next to each item ( _“1_ _st_ _,” “Immediately after Mania,” “cope de grâce,” “Use w/mines,”  “Let it get_ _real_ _close,” “2nd,” _“_ Get Maxwell to do it _, _”_  _“Keep extinguisher on hand – _ _Remember last time!!!_ _”_ ).  

Maxwell was starting to zone out when Jacobi jarred her back to reality,  “Think that’s a good place to start?”

“What?” she blinked. She realized she must have missed the first half of his sentence.

“For the demonstration tomorrow night.  Should I start with a Mania?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” Maxwell said in annoyance.

“Or should I start with the SSM?” he pressed.  “Or do I _end_ there.  Yeah, right?  Nice and dramatic.  The literal big guns...  Or does the Diana make a better ending?  Dianas always make them ooh and ah.”

“Jacobi, the amount I care is so infinitesimally tiny it would be undetectable to anything but an electron microscope,” she yawned.  

“Come on, Maxwell! We did your boring computer thing, now we’re doing the cool explode-y thing!” He was practically giddy with the excitement of planning his fireworks display.   

“You realize we have eight hours in the back of this truck, right?  I might have to kill you if you keep this up the whole time.”

“Eight?” He asked becoming more serious.  

“Yes, why?”

Jacobi pulled off his jacket, examining his right arm.  He peeled off the strip of duct tape he used to cover up the LED display indicating the power level left in his cyborg arm in case someone caught sight of the glow.  It was hidden under the fabric of his jacket but they were trying to avoid detection and it was better to be safe than sorry.   Two of the six little lines remained lit.  The center light, which the other six encircled, was yellow instead of green.  At least it wasn’t red yet.  He had twelve hours left.  Maxwell gave him an incredulous look.  

“It’s fine,” he sighed at the look on her face.

“What if we get stuck in traffic?”

“For four hours on open road?” Jacobi asked. Maxwell opened her mouth to respond and Jacobi cut her off, “Yeah, I know.  We’re in China.  Mega-Jams.  I read that article, too.”  He rubbed his forehead, “We’ve got a night in the Chengde, so unless I need to punch a member of the hotel staff, I’ll be fine before we make it to the room.  And even then I can just use my left.”

“Did you bring your charger?” she asked, doing nothing to remove the superior tone from her voice.

“Yes,” he grumbled.

“And an adaptor?” she continued.

“Yes, _mom_.  You saw them both last night,” Jacobi rolled his eyes.  

“I’m not helping you if you run out of power,” Maxwell chided him.

“Uh-huh.  So no opinions on SSMs?”

“No opinion on SSMs, Jacobi.”

“Do you think _they_ do?  What’s the best kind of bomb for protecting Falun Gong people?”

“Protecting Falun Gong practitioners?” Maxwell repeated, scowling.  “Are you sure that’s what they’re after?”

“Yeah!  Well, like 88% sure,” Jacobi shrugged.  He paused, “75…maybe 70% sure?”

“I thought it was free elections,” Maxwell said.  

“No way!” Jacobi scoffed.  “It’s definitely Falun Gong.  Maybe.  Maybe it’s Tibet.  One of those.”

“One of those totally unrelated parties,” Maxwell shook her head.  

She knew she _should_ care who they were arming.  She should at least know to whom they were about to give all this military tech.  And she knew in another life she would have.  In that other life she wouldn’t have been here.  The Alana Maxwell who left Montana would never have thought she would be here.  But that Alana Maxwell was long gone.  She was someone else now, the clay had been remolded.  It had been fired and it was too late to go back.  Not that she would ever want to.  This life suited her better in many ways.

Even if she did care, the sale would happen.  It always did.  If Goddard didn’t arm them, whoever “they” were, someone else would.  It was happening every day all around the world and Maxwell’s conscience would change nothing.   Everyone in the world was a monster to one degree or another.  Maxwell and Jacobi just admitted it more readily than most.  

And this was their job.  They were monsters and they were both beyond that particular choice now.  They had to be monsters.  They would always be monsters.  And it was easier to be a monster when things were distant and impersonal.   It was the only time Maxwell accepted ignorance.  Never get too close to anyone or anything on a mission.

She glanced up at Jacobi.  He was intensely writing in his dossier again.  Maxwell smiled.  Citizens of the end of the world.  


	3. Sophia Hopper & Albert Nobel; Fiancés

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chengde, Hebei, China

 

At the border of Hebei Province, the trucks and Jacobi and Maxwell went in different directions. The majority of them would go to Goddard-owned compounds until the final sale went through.  Then they would be sent to whatever location the weapons’ new owners wanted the cargo dropped off.  The two trucks holding the demonstration samples would follow back roads to a warehouse closer to the rendezvous location.  But that display wasn’t until tomorrow.  Tonight Jacobi and Maxwell had to pretend to be tourists.

They were picked up by a car, an ordinary-looking taxicab; the sort of car that might pick one up at an airport or hotel. They were armed with suitcases containing vacation clothing and not at all their tactical equipment in their overlarge backpacks.  They would ditch the suitcases once they were back to being black ops agents, but at a hotel the wheelie luggage was less conspicuous than heavy black backpacks and equipment belts.  The driver who, for all Maxwell knew, had been engineered in one of GF’s basement genetics labs, helped load their suitcases into the car.

He didn’t ask any questions and referred to them by the names printed on their fake passports: Mr. Nobel and Ms. Hopper.  They were American tourists from New York. Completely innocent and naïve. It was a look Maxwell was actually pretty good at pulling off.  People didn’t think much of her until she proved she was far smarter than they – or anyone they had ever known, for that matter.  She knew it was because she was young and young-looking, and mostly because she was a woman.  While, in real life it so often frustrated her, on missions like this, it was handy.  She certainly looked more innocent than Jacobi with his resting scowl and cybernetic arm. 

At the moment, the latter was covered by his jacket and gloves. Yes, other people had arms similar to his, but nowhere near so advanced.  Jacobi’s looked different enough from anyone else’s in the world to draw attention.  Earlier  _ Rocobi _ models (sold as  _ Goddard Futuristics Prosthetic Devices _ , which was a far more universal name but also far less hilarious in her opinion) had started to hit the market.  For a price, of course.  A high one.  And that was the other reason to keep it covered for now.  Even if someone thought it was an ordinary GFPD, that would imply the wearer and his partner had a lot of money.  And they didn’t want to look  _ too _ anything.  Too rich.  Too American.  Too odd.  They had a very thin line to walk, but they had done it before.  Dozens of times between them. They were good at it by now.  

Maxwell pulled out her Goddard smartphone and clipped it into a kitten-themed hardcase (which Maxwell  _ never _ would have gotten, but Hopper apparently liked).  Now it looked no different from an iPhone. Unless someone was looking directly over her shoulder, they wouldn’t be able to tell it was anything special.  She checked the trucks’ process away from her current location.  

Knowing the taxi driver was on Cutter’s payroll – but also well aware that he was so low on the totem pole, he probably had no idea who the two people in his backseat were – it was a good time to work out their identities’ dynamic.  It was decided beforehand that Nobel and Hopper would be fiancés.  It was the easiest way to explain why an unrelated man and woman were traveling alone together.  The least conspicuous.  It wasn’t the first time they’d done this.  Calling Jacobi her fiancé was always the answer that seemed to go down smoothest, no one ever questioned it; no one ever looked twice.  

She wished Jacobi could pass for her older brother, but no one would buy it.  They looked too different. She hated applying even fake romance to their relationship.  It felt wrong.  One of the things she and Jacobi had in common was their lack of interest in that kind of thing, in sex, in romance.  It was one of the first things they really truly bonded over.  So applying just the veneer of it to their relationship, even momentarily, felt wrong.  It also felt cheap, like they were dumbing down their relationship, making it something the plebs could process; as if two people romantically and sexually involved were or could be anything like she and Jacobi were. 

It was never something she could explain.  Jacobi was her best friend and he was more than that.  He was the person closest to her in all the world.  He understood her in a way most people could not, and she thought she was the same to him.  They were near-constant companions.  Maxwell felt closer to him than she ever had to any of her actual brothers.  Anyone she had ever met. It was like she had been waiting all her life for the last few years.

Jacobi was exceptional in almost every way. He was brilliantly intelligent. He was hilarious in that perfect deadpan way. He was caring below that shell of disinterest. He was driven.  He was bold.  He was willing to take risks.  He lived for risks.  He had that same mentality as Maxwell.  Push things farther than their farthest.  Daniel Jacobi was a man who lived like a dynamite fuse.  He was her loudest cheerleader.  He was her anchor.  He was her confidant.  

“Everything look good?” Jacobi asked leaning over her shoulder to see the map.

“Yep,” Maxwell said.  “Should we work out our cover?”

“Sounds good,” Jacobi agreed.  “Where do we start?  How we met?” 

“You work for me,” Maxwell said with authority.  

“I…work for you?” Jacobi raised his eyebrows, “And now I’m marrying you?  ‘Ms. Grey will see you now.’” 

“Good point,” Maxwell sighed.  She slipped her smartphone back into her backpack. “Maybe…we work for the same company?” 

“Okay,” Jacobi agreed.  “What is it?” 

“A tech company…” Maxwell started. 

“Not  _ everyone _ can work at a tech company, Maxwell,” Jacobi rolled his eyes. 

“Not everyone does!” she asserted.

“Except  _ all  _ your back stories,” Jacobi pointed out.  “In Chad, you owned a tech company; in Tennessee, you worked for one; in Uzbekistan it was a start-up; in Albania, you designed the latest iPad; in Mexi—“ he ticked them off on his fingers.  

“ _ Fine! _ ”  Maxwell grumbled, “You decide, then.” 

“Uh…” a brief pause.  “Military…?”

“Really, Jacobi?” She asked giving him a look.  “All  _ my  _ fake backstories are the same?” 

“Okay, okay!”  He conceded.  “I don’t know.” 

“You really  _ can  _ only think in explosions,” Maxwell sighed. 

“So?” Jacobi asked.  

“How about real estate?  Nice and safe.” 

“Sure, yeah, that works.  And…we work in different offices but met at the company holiday party?” Jacobi said. “No explosions.” 

“I’m very proud of you,” Maxwell said sarcastically. “We met at the party and talked the night away.  Love at first sight.” 

“And we’ve been dating ever since. And one year later we’re getting married,” Jacobi finished. 

“That works,” Maxwell nodded, “just schmaltzy enough.” 

“Right?”  Jacobi winced, “I managed to keep myself from throwing up.” 

“What else do we need to work out?” she asked.  “What else do people ask?” 

“Uh…When the wedding is, how I proposed, how many kids we want…” Jacobi said.

“June, Niagara Falls, two kids,” Maxwell provided. 

“Got it,” Jacobi agreed.  “Relatively painless.” 

“Relatively,” Maxwell nodded.  “Unless I come up with some horrible, toxically cute pet name for you.” 

“I don’t care if it’s breaking character, I will pull the pin on a grenade and blow us both to Hell if you do,” Jacobi assured her.  

She smirked at him.  “I’ll have to come up with a good one.”

Everything on missions like this one was timed. There was wiggle room, but it was minutes rather than hours. Tonight they would play tourists in Chengde and check into a hotel (reservation booked by someone at Goddard Futuristics in special projects, or someone else nebulously behind the scenes), Maxwell would resist the urge to smother Jacobi in his sleep to stop him from snoring. Then, tomorrow, they would keep up the act for a few hours before disappearing to rendezvous with their trucks.  So far, so good. 

When they pulled up to the hotel, Maxwell slid on her fake engagement ring.  Jacobi slipped the cabbie an envelope, not a fare but his paycheck from Goddard Futuristics. Then Jacobi and Maxwell stepped out into the cold night air.  The hotel looked like an American would expect a hotel in China to look: gold and red, sloping roof, rock garden out front. Maxwell wasn’t sure if that was for authenticity or because it was what tourists expected.  After all, international tourists must have been common.   They were within walking distance of a World Heritage site.  “You good?” Jacobi asked popping out the handle on his wheelie luggage.

“I’m good,” agreed Maxwell, pocketing her smartphone.

Neither one of them noticed the young boy watching them.  Even if they had, neither would have thought anything of him...

 


	4. Sophia Hopper & Albert Nobel; Liars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bìshǔ Shānzhuāng, Chengde, China

His name was Li Haojun and he had been spying on the agents for miles now.  

His father, Li Yongming, was needed to help with the preparations for the agents’ arrival.  Otherwise, he would have been tailing them himself.  Li Yongming had no allies in his present mission and as much as he hated to involve his son, Haojun was more than willing to help his father, but he knew it made his father very nervous.  

Haojun also knew it took months to work out Hypatia Technologies’ plans.  Months to track where Hypatia Technologies would set its agents loose.  He still didn’t know anything about the men they were sending, who the agents might be, what their full names were, but time was running out and Li Yongming was needed at the rendezvous site.   

He was aware, too, of what his father was doing.  He was turning on the People’s Coalition for Freedom.  That idea terrified Haojun more than he would or could admit.  He was a proud boy and his fear embarrassed him.  

His feelings were all twisted up in his gut.  Fear was one.  Confusion.  Sadness.  Haojun had known these people for years.  They were his friends.  They were his family.  He loved them and they loved him. But his father was his _father._ His father knew best.  Haojun wouldn’t know how to turn on his father if he wanted to.  It would be too wrong to even consider.  

His father told him it would be better in the end.  They could move into a bigger home. They would have more.  Best of all, they wouldn’t need to hide anymore.  They would be safe.  For the first time in Haojun’s life, they would really be safe.  

But what would it mean for everyone else?  

Haojun didn’t know what would happen to the Coalition, and his father didn’t say.  It wouldn’t be good.  It wouldn’t be nice.  But he trusted that his father wouldn’t do anything to get their friends hurt, or worse.  But they might go to prison.  He had heard terrible things about prison, but maybe his father would break them out.  Maybe he would help their friends escape.   His father wouldn’t let anything happen to Big Sister Yuxia, Big Sister Namei, Uncle Zhonghao, Uncle Maihong or any of the others. Would he?  

Haojun’s mother had been the one to join the Coalition when Haojun was a baby. But his mother had died three years ago now. Haojun still didn’t know much about the circumstances of her death. He had been too young to understand when it happened, and the details were still fuzzy.  Maybe that was why his father was changing his mind about the Coalition.  He accepted that this was something he was too young to understand, and put his faith in his father.

So the younger Li followed the car for miles on his bike.  He kept himself hidden in the shadows on country roads and in crowds in towns.  He was careful not to let the people inside the cab see him.  He didn’t know who they would be or what they would look like.  They frightened him without even seeing their faces.  

They were here with weapons, things that were far worse than the guns Haojun was used to seeing.  Maybe even Things that could Break the Whole World.  His father said they were American and weren’t actually interested in helping the Coalition.  They were there for money. That wasn’t how Zhonghao and Yuxia talked about it. They seemed to believe these people were their allies.  His father said it was because they were young, and he told them so, but they laughed it off.  Haojun wished they had listened.  Maybe then it would be different.  

By the time the car finally, finally stopped at the hotel, Haojun’s muscles and mind were screaming in agony.  He was breathing hard and blood was pounding in his temples.  Getting off the bike, he started feeling the cold again, which the long ride had forced away.  He hung beside the main doors and busied himself with his bike tire, as if he was afraid something was wrong with it.  He peered up through his bangs watching with anxiety as the car door opened and the Hypatia Tech agents stepped out.  

Haojun expected them to be big with cold eyes and crisp suits; barely human in their icy smugness.  He was expecting them to both be men.  He was expecting them to be, well, more intimidating.  He wasn’t expecting what he got. He wasn’t sure what emotion flooded his gut, if it was embarrassment, relief, or even some sort of strange disappointment.  

One was a pale, white woman with curly brown hair pulled into a thick ponytail.  The man looked like he might be from Yanbian, almost: his olive skin had a golden tint and his eyes were narrow and dark.  He had a heart-shaped face and heavy eyebrows.  He wore glasses and a thick bomber jacket.  She had a ring on her finger.  Neither one appeared armed.  The boy wondered if these were actually the two secret agents or if his father had been mistaken. Maybe he got the car’s license plate wrong.  Haojun worried he lost track of the real agents. But he would stick to them, if only because he was afraid of making a mistake.

When they entered the hotel, Haojun was close behind.  He followed them close enough to hear their names: Albert Nobel and Sophia Hopper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope I'm using the honorifics correctly ^^;
> 
> Sorry this chapter is so short. The next one is longer, I promise.


	5. Sophia Hopper & Albert Nobel; Tourists

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bìshǔ Shānzhuāng, Chengde, China

 

The hotel was extremely nice.  The kind of place Jacobi would never be able to set foot in if not for Goddard Futuristics.  It was busy with people from all corners of the globe.  Young lovers, businessmen, mothers and fathers towing rows of children or carrying sleeping ones back up to their rooms.  Everyone seemed to be returning from their busy days exploring the Qing gardens and palaces, or whatever else, and were heading up to bed.  Mandarin and English were the most commonly overheard languages and Jacobi eavesdropped on what he could with relative disinterest.  The most exciting thing he overheard was a man in a very expensive suit setting up some kind of drug deal, but that was only interesting compared to his other listening options.

Jacobi watched as Maxwell fidgeted with the fake engagement ring. It was the only jewelry he had ever seen her wear besides a necklace now and then.  That necklace meant a lot to her, even if she wouldn’t admit it did.  It was bronze, but only in color as the paint of the chain was chipping at the clasp, revealing a dull silver color underneath.  The medallion was actually a computer microchip.  She had had both necklace and microchip for years, long before Jacobi met her.  She generally didn’t wear it on field missions.

The ring seemed to make her extremely uncomfortable, but the man behind the desk didn’t seem to take any notice.  He just checked in Mr. Nobel and Miss Hopper, did a cursory glance over their IDs, and the summoned the bellboy to lead them to their room. Jacobi slipped the bellboy his tip. It wasn’t Jacobi’s money and he wanted to keep the staff on his side, so he tipped far better than he ever did in the States.  Back home he generally preferred the bare minimum.  He had long since come to terms with the fact that he was an asshole who only tipped ever and at all because he tended to haunt the same restaurants and didn’t want spit in his food.

The room was on the second floor, the perfect height so it wouldn’t be quickly broken into, but one could easily survive the drop out the window even without the stealth equipment Maxwell had in her bag.  They were within sight of the fire exit, with the ten or so rooms in between.  They were also far from the elevators so they wouldn’t be too common a sight for anyone using those.

In addition to being strategically placed, it was a very nice room.  Large.  Warm.  Big TV.  Big shower.  All the little amenities that jacked up your bill.  The kind of thing a young couple might splurge on.  It fit the characters they were playing.  And that attention to detail and dedication to the act made sense; everyone at Goddard Futuristics seemed to have a damn flair for the dramatic.  Maxwell closed and locked the door.  Jacobi immediately began taking the place apart looking for bugs. They kept the conversation joking and flirtatious while they checked for surveillance devices.

“Do you think Mittens misses us, my Sweet Mushy Gushy Kissy Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter?” Maxwell asked in her most obnoxious voice as she removed the lampshade and eyed the inside of it for any recording devices.  

“I’m sure your sister is doing a good job taking care of him,” Jacobi said kindly, while also shooting Maxwell the dirtiest look he ever had.  Before turning back to the TV he had tipped forward, he mouthed the word “ _grenade_ ” to remind her of his earlier threat.   He presently popped open the back to probe through the wires for anything that didn’t belong.  She grinned mischievously at him.  

Once they were satisfied they were completely alone, they dropped the fiancé charade faster than a bowl of burning thermite.  “Really, Maxwell?!” Jacobi snapped.  “ _Really?!”_

“What?” She grinned, clearly knowing full well “what,”  “I thought it was _vewy sweet_.”  She practically whined the last two words.

“I thought you hated _whiny baby tawk_ ,” Jacobi said, forcing her to take her own medicine.

“Stop!  Okay!  You win!” she groaned, “I hate when _you do baby tawk!_ ”  

“Do you even know how human beings communicate?”  Jacobi rolled his eyes.

“I mostly hang out with you so...no?”

“I walked into that one,” Jacobi sighed.

“You certainly did,” Maxwell assured him.

Jacobi pulled off his jacket and tossed it vaguely in the direction of the hook, gloves in the pocket.  He remembered something.  “Hang on, isn’t ‘Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter’ from MST3k?” Jacobi asked.

“It is,” Maxwell said.  “It was that weird pink dog that Mike loved and the ‘bots hated.”

“And TV’s Frank wrote a song about it.  I remember,” Jacobi pawed through his bag for the charger for his arm, adaptor still attached. He popped it into the outlet and sat on the edge of the bed.  He pressed the release on the arm itself, pushed, twisted, off it came.  His arm from the elbow down came away, robotic parts separating from flesh.  He plugged the arm in and left it to charge.  The circle of LEDs lit up one after the other, indicating the charging process was underway.  He had let it get too close, the central light was a threatening red.  Maxwell would chew him out for that if she saw, so Jacobi put the tape back over it.  

Jacobi sat back and scratched an itch on his stump, next to the titanium implant in his bicep.  Once upon a time, not all that long ago, Jacobi had had a very hard time looking at what was left of his organic arm. But the angst and dysmorphia had faded over time. Now it was his new normal.  Maxwell had helped, certainly.  He never would have gotten over it without her.  He never would have _survived_ without her.  An SI-5 agent who couldn’t do his job didn’t tend to live very long.  Jacobi knew his head had been on the block, but Maxwell and Kepler had come through for him.  Maxwell had designed his arm.  She updated it.  She made it human.  She made it his.  

Recovery had been hard.  Physically it had been difficult, but weirdly rewarding.  Emotionally?  Emotionally it had been as crippling as the amputation had been.  It was hard to face.  Hard to remove his arm every night and put it back on in the morning.  Hard to just accept the reality of what happened. For months after the Teel Mission, he had had to visit the Goddard Futuristics shrink regularly, which was no help, detracted from time he could have been working, and just made him more miserable and weird.  

There had been no way to escape reality.  And Maxwell forced him to realize _escape_ wasn’t an option.  He had to face it and accept it.  He had to accept the new normal.  Her therapy was at its best when she listened to him vent, offered reassurance, and, most importantly, open-palmed slapped him across his face when he got too mopey.  And she taught him how to center himself when it got to be too much.  At first he thought it was absolute bullshit, but when he finally gave in and listened to her, it was actually extremely helpful.  It helped with the panic attacks he pretended he didn’t have.  And now things were the way they always had been.  No, that wasn’t right.  They were similar, but they were different.  But they were _normal_.  Maxwell helped him get there.  She was the best therapist a guy could ask for, really.  

Maxwell was the best _friend_ a guy could ask for.  

Just...the best _anything_ he could ask for.  Far better than he ever deserved.  He was lucky their paths had somehow crossed.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Maxwell said. “I’m sure I smell like truck exhaust.”

“You do.” Jacobi flopped back onto the bed, arms spread out.  It wouldn’t be the first time they were forced to share a bed. It was never something either of them wanted, but being a corporate stooge wasn’t always glamorous or pleasant.  Once upon a time they had hated sharing a bed, now it didn’t matter much at all to either of them.

He wasn’t crazy about the fiancé routine.  He knew it was the easiest way for a man and woman to get anywhere.  It raised the least questions and eyebrows.  It didn’t require any extra effort.  He understood the point.  But he didn’t _like_ it.  He’d gotten used to the routine by now that the discomfort had sloughed off.  He’d done it with other agents, and it never made him feel as weird as it did with Maxwell.  It wasn’t so uncomfortable anymore, especially because they didn’t have to take the act very far, throw in a few “hons” here, a couple “dears” there, remember a fake wedding  – June – and a fake engagement  – Niagara Falls – and you were golden.  But it was still harder with Maxwell to keep up the act.

Maybe it was because he really didn’t care about the other agents, but Maxwell _was_ something to him.  Maxwell _mattered_ to him, probably more than he mattered to himself.  And wasn’t _that_ a statement.  Two years ago, he never would have believed that was possible.  Sure, he would die for Kepler and he trusted Kepler to keep him alive, but it was a different relationship.  Kepler was above him.  Greater than Jacobi was.  There was no way _not_ to feel that way about Kepler.  Maxwell was different.  She didn’t naturally command his loyalty and respect, but she earned it.  

“You do, too,” Maxwell assured him.

“I’ll take one after you.  Do you want room service for dinner?” he asked.

“What,” said Maxwell sarcastically from the bathroom, “you don’t want to go out and explore?”

“Not even a little,” he said with his eyes closed. He had his left arm behind his head and what remained of his right lying next to him on the bed. “We’ll have to do that tomorrow anyway.”

“Such a shame, in a far-off foreign land and forced to take in the culture.”  Her tone was sarcastic, but Jacobi knew Maxwell had no more urge to go exploring than he did.

“I know, right?” Jacobi said. He sat up enough to grab the menu off the bedside table, supporting himself with his back and shoulders pressed to the headboard.  There were a lot of things he had to get used to doing with one elbow and arm.  It took time, but he’d gotten his left hand as strong and coordinated as his right.  He’d made himself ambidextrous, something he was very proud of.

He glanced over the translated menu as Maxwell showered.  Very little was familiar to him.  Braised oxtail (pass).  Sautéed shrimp with longan (what the Hell was longan?).  Braised hairtail (honestly, Jacobi had no idea if a hairtail was a plant or an animal or some unknown third option).  Sautéed beef with cabbage (ew, cabbage).  Spicy lamb feet (pass).  He scanned the rest of the list, barely taking it in, and gave up.  Then he turned on the TV and watched a news program. He didn’t understand a word of it.  

Maxwell emerged wet-haired and dressed in her pajamas: a long t-shirt and MIT sweatpants.  She was pale and white, the kind of person who needed SPF 5,000 sunscreen.  She was small, naturally thin and petite in every way.  Looking at Maxwell, you would have no idea what you were in for.  Her eyes were huge and brown, her hair was messy and mousy, her face was oval was soft.  She looked young and innocent.  She was young, but she wasn’t innocent.  She was one of the toughest people Jacobi had ever met, and that was even before the life of an SI-5 operative hardened her into what she was now. 

He handed off the menu as they crossed paths, her from the bathroom him into it.  “You want to order?”

“Sure,” she took it.  “What do you want?”

“I have no idea,” Jacobi assured her, shutting the bathroom door.

“Then you have to eat whatever I order for you.  Okay?” Maxwell called through the door.  Jacobi decided to take that risk.  “Okay,” Maxwell said, taking his silence as the affirmative it was.

When he emerged in his own pajamas, Maxwell had already paid the waiter and was crossing to the coffee table to eat.  “What’d you get?” he asked, making sure the door locked behind her.  

“Venison,” Maxwell said.  “For both of us.”

“Venison?” He sat down looking at the plate with distrust.  “Deer?  Really?”

“Venison is really good,” she assured him.  “We used to have it out in Montana.”

“Sorry, I come from a civilized world where we didn’t have to go out into the woods to find dinner.  We had grocery stores.”  He poked at the meat with his chopstick.  It wasn’t what he was expecting from venison.  “Why is it like…small and skinny?” He assumed deer meat would be like an extremely tough steak; instead, he was looking at a plate of bite-sized pieces of paleish meat covered in a brown sauce and vegetables.

“It’s tendon,” Maxwell provided, already having dug into hers.  She contentedly popped a piece of meat and some kind of pea into her mouth.

“Oh,” Jacobi said.  He didn’t pause before taking a bite.  It was pretty good and he made a sound of approval.  Neither Maxwell nor Jacobi was squeamish when it came to food.  They were willing to eat basically anything, and generally ended up enjoying it.  His complaint had been more to give Maxwell a hard time about being from the middle of nowhere than an actual objection.  

“It’s supposed to be good for you,” Maxwell said. “According to traditional Chinese medicine, dried deer tendon strengthens limbs and joints.”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Jacobi answered.

“That’s good, because it doesn’t actually work,” Maxwell responded over the lip of her Tsingtao Beer bottle.  

“It just needs to taste good,” Jacobi said eating a piece of tendon and a pepper. He didn’t realize it would be the last calm dinner he would have for nearly a week.

 

***

 

Both Maxwell and Jacobi spent the next day constantly checking the time.  

Yes, everything was very nice. Yes, look at all the history. Yes, the sun was bright and beautiful.  Yes, he got to make fun of Maxwell when she had to smother herself in sunscreen despite the fact that it was winter.  But it was _boring_.  It was boring and tonight promised to be fun.  He had been planning and re-planning the demonstration for the better part of yesterday and reworking parts of it in his head today.  

There were parts of the history he wouldn’t even pretend didn’t excite him.  They were in _China_ after all.  The country that invented gunpowder over a millennium before the West ever saw the stuff.  The country that had an explosives arms race when Europeans were still smacking each other with broadswords.  The country that didn’t stop with guns and cannons but had “fire-arrows” and “caltrop fire balls” and “Thunderclap Bombs” and “Iron Bombs” and “Bone-Burning and Bruising Fire-Oil Magic Bomb” long before the modern era.  But the “scenic spots,” temples, and pagodas of the Mountain Resort without so much as a damn firework in sight?  Jacobi was getting restless.  

The worst part was all the stupid ponds and lakes around.  There were various little islands where Jacobi found himself surrounded on all sides by water.  Oceans, he was fine with.  They didn’t hang out in the ocean.  Mostly.  But inland bodies of water…?  Jacobi was less comfortable there.  Especially around ponds.  Ponds like the dozens in and around the Chengde Mountain Resort.  Frozen or otherwise, he had a severe distrust of ponds.  He knew what populated ponds.

Jacobi kept up his usual routine of putting Maxwell closer to any body of water that might attract…them.  She was always closer to any feathered menaces that might land on the water, or in this case, ice.  Maxwell had long ago noticed his routine.  It was their first or second mission together when she brought it up.  “Why do you always do that?” she had asked him.  

“Do what?” he responded, honestly unsure of what she meant.  It was sort of reflex to put someone between ducks and himself.  

“Walk on the inside, like this.”

He realized that she had caught him.  “Uh…”

“Can you swim?” she asked.

“Not well,” he answered honestly, with a shrug.  He could swim to a point, but it wasn’t exactly a favorite hobby and Maxwell was probably a stronger swimmer than he was.  Most people were.  She seemed to accept that response, but she continued to glance leerily at him whenever he consciously put her between himself and the water.  Just as she did in Chengde.  

They played tourist and they played couple whenever they had to, and the only thing worse than the former was the latter.  They were at lunch when Maxwell checked her smartphone for the millionth time.  “Oh, thank God,” she muttered.  “We can pick up the car.”

“Good,” he dramatically tossed down his chopsticks.

They played two games of rock-paper-scissors to see who would drive.  Maxwell won both, Jacobi was bitter.  They picked up the car.  It looked decently ordinary, but it absolutely wasn’t.  It was a silver sedan with a divider separating the back seat from the front like that in a limo or taxi.  The divider perfectly soundproofed back and front in case of emergency.  Its trunk was far larger than it looked, large enough to fit a couple of bodies side by side.  In case of emergency.  But from the outside the car was nondescript, expertly nondescript.  

No one would notice them if they hadn’t been looking for them.  They checked out of the hotel, threw out the wheelie luggage, and disappeared.  Li Haojun had, of course, been looking for them.  He  followed on his bike.  


	6. Sophia Hopper & Albert Nobel; Resistance Members

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chengde County, Hebei, China

 

They were outside the city when Jacobi fell silent in the passenger seat.  Maxwell glanced over at him.  She expected to see him leaning back with his feet on the dash and his battered paperback in hand.  He wasn’t, instead his gaze fixed on the sideview mirror.  

“Something wrong?” Maxwell asked.  

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I think there might be.”

“What is it?” she asked, frowning.

“That kid,” Jacobi answered. “Don’t be obvious about it, but look.  There’s a kid, twelve-ish, bowl cut, red bike, cherubic face.”

Maxwell peered into the rearview mirror.  She quickly saw the boy Jacobi was referring to.  And when he glanced up from the road, he _did_ look familiar.  She remembered that glance.  “Crap,” she muttered, “I saw him by the hotel last night.”

“I saw him outside the Longevity Pagoda thing this morning.  Dammit, he’s been following us longer than I thought…”  Jacobi let out a frustrated sound.  “Alright, let’s fix this.  Pull into that gas station.” Under the guise of cleaning his glasses, he checked his RIA 1911. He left it in the holster, but he unclipped the latter so he could grab the pistol quickly.  “I’m going to grab him.  Once I pin him, open the back door.”

“Got it.  Be careful,” Maxwell said, pulling into the filling station.   

“Who are you talking to?” Jacobi asked incredulously.

“Exactly,” Maxwell said.  She stepped out of the car at the same time Jacobi did.  But she pretended she was checking the rear tire while Jacobi quickly but casually approached the boy.  

The whole thing happened very quickly.  Jacobi walked up under the pretense of asking directions.  At first there was no response from the kid.  He probably bought Jacobi’s act, thought that they hadn’t caught him.  But then…well, by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late.  

There wasn’t time for the boy to yell, Jacobi caught him on the inhale, his hand over the kid’s mouth. Maxwell couldn’t see exactly what her partner was doing because Jacobi was expertly concealing it, blocking a clear view of the boy with his body and coat.  He moved back to the car, nudging the silenced boy along, quickly and quietly, not at a run, but a speed walk, a New York walk.  To anyone looking, it wouldn’t seem conspicuous.  When they got close, Maxwell opened the door to the backseat, already climbing into the front.  By the time Jacobi pulled the door closed (with the toe of his boot) Maxwell was already leaving the gas station.  It was so fast, so casual, a kid getting into a car maybe with a family friend, maybe?  And by the time anyone thought to question it, the silver car was already gone.  Maxwell locked the doors.

“Don’t be too obvious, but don’t let anyone see him!” Jacobi instructed Maxwell as they pulled away.  

“This isn’t my first hostage situation,” Maxwell reminded Jacobi, glancing at the boy in the mirror.

“Zǒu kāi! Zǒu kāi! Nǐ fēng le! Ràng wǒ zǒu!”  The boy struggled in Jacobi’s grip but he held like a vice.  He kept one hand around the boy’s wrists and pulled something from coat pocket.  When he let go he had successfully secured a white plastic zip-tie around the boy’s slightly chubby wrists.  Maxwell turned on the radio so that he couldn’t be overheard from the outside.  “Wǒ shénmè méi gàn! Ràng wǒ zǒu!”  ("Let me go!  Let me go!  You’re crazy!  Let me go!  This is crazy!  I haven’t done anything!  Let me go!")

“Okay, kiddo, let’s you and me have a little talk,” Jacobi said.

The boy went quiet and glared at him.

“Do you speak English?” Jacobi asked.

“Wǒ bù huì! Ràng wǒ zǒu!”

“He says ‘no,’ and he wants us to let him go,” Maxwell provided.  “But it looks like he understands English.”

“Seems that way.  You understand English?” he asked.

“Dāng rǎn à,” he answered

“He says ‘yes’,” Maxwell relayed a softer version of the kid’s “obviously” to Jacobi.  No reason to get Jacobi upset at this point.  

“Good!” Jacobi said happily, “I’m gonna ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them. And if I like the answers, who knows, maybe the cops’ll find more than just your bike back there.”  Jacobi ended coldly and with a shrug.  

That stung Maxwell, deep down in her hardened heart. She wanted to believe it was a bluff, but she was never sure with Jacobi.  She wasn’t even sure with herself.  Shooting a hostage was always low, but they were extremely low people.  They had both shot hostages before.  

But there was an added level of horror when the hostage was bound.  When he was young.  When he was glaring at Jacobi with stubborn tears in his eyes, his lip quivering.  Maxwell didn’t think she would be able to pull the trigger, at least not with her eyes opened.  And if she managed to, she would never ever forget it.  It would take a very long time to forgive herself.

“Wǒ shénme bù gēn nǐ shuō!” the boy snapped in a shaking voice.  

“He says he’s not telling you anything,” Maxwell said.

“That is _adorable_ ,” Jacobi said slowly.  “But you are.  You really, really are.”

“Bèn dàn!” The boy swore with such acidity Jacobi didn’t need the translation.  

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

No response.  

“You wanna do the manly thing?” Jacobi asked, “ _Fine!_ ” Jacobi pulled his handgun from his holster and put it to the boy’s forehead.

The boy let out a wordless gasp.  Maxwell kept her eyes on the road.  

“You were the one who wanted to play action hero,” Jacobi pointed out.  Then his voice got slower, meaner – a crude imitation of Major Kepler’s, “but I don’t play games.”

“Tā shuō de shì duì,” Maxwell said, following her cue, assuring the boy that Jacobi was telling the truth.  That wasn’t necessarily the case.  Jacobi might have very little patience for things outside of the ballistics field – or at least he believed he had very little patience for things outside of ballistics.  He was wrong, but that was an entirely different issue – but he wasn’t what he was pretending to be.  He wasn’t who he was trying to be.  It was Kepler who didn’t play games.  It was Kepler who never kept anyone alive longer than necessary.  Kepler always shot his hostages.  If it was Kepler in the backseat, he would not hesitate to shoot the child.  

But this was _Jacobi_.  Maxwell still believed that Daniel Jacobi was better than Warren Kepler.  She wanted to believe that would always be true…

 _“I guess it still sneaks up on you sometimes…”_ Jacobi had said one night, sitting on her couch, regretting that he’d just burned down a hospital on Kepler’s orders, regretting the murders he’d just committed.  

“It” was a conscience, a heart, a soul, whatever you wanted to call it.  “It” was that final clinging shred of humanity.  “It” was something they both had.  Even when they threw out scruples and morals that tattered and worn piece of humanity sunk its teeth in, and wouldn’t let go.  “It” was something she struggled to kill and struggled just as hard to resuscitate on a daily basis.  She hated it for existing, she wished it would just die, but at the same time she was glad it was there, and glad it hadn’t.  That conflict hurt almost as much as having a soul did.  Jacobi, like she, still had a heart buried in that scarred chest.  Jacobi fought his even harder than she did hers, but it was still in there.

Maxwell hoped for both the boy’s sake as well as Jacobi’s the kid wasn’t stupid enough to test a man with a gun to his head.

“Ready for your quiz?” Jacobi asked brightly.

“Nǐ yīnggai huídǎ tā. Zhèyàng tā bù hài ni,” Maxwell provided. ("You should answer his questions, he won’t hurt you if you do.")

Maxwell turned her eyes to the road.  She would play Jacobi’s good cop when he needed her to.  She kept reminding herself they had to do this.  They needed to know what this kid knew and this was the fastest way to get it out of him.  They needed to know, because it might kill them if they didn’t.

Everything in Maxwell  and Jacobi’s lives came down to “us or them.”  And for Maxwell and Jacobi the answer would always be “us.”  Survival was essential.  

Her father may have promised Eternal Life in the Hereafter, but Maxwell neither believed in nor was she interested in the afterlife.  Heaven sounded like a nightmare: stagnation, boredom, ignorance, the end of growth, an ending without end.  No, she would just survive as long as she could in this life.  Then, when all was said and done, she would die and rot and reduce to dust.  Return to the star stuff she once was.  Become something else, some other part of the universe.  

Maxwell and Jacobi were both survivors.  They were survivors on their own merits.  No one had ever cared about them. Not their families. Not the friends they didn’t have, besides each other. Not teachers or bosses. They had to look out for themselves and each other.  They were very good at it, but Maxwell knew in the end it didn’t matter how good you were, you only had to make one mistake. 

“Yes or no?” Jacobi demanded.  

“À- à. Hǎo,” the boy’s voice cracked.

“He says he’ll answer,” Maxwell translated.

“Hey, good work!  You got the first question right!” Jacobi said in a congratulatory tone.  “Question two: how long have you been following us?”

“Chéngdé zīqian de,” the boy said.

“Since before we got to Chengde,” Maxwell translated.

“On your bike?  That sounds like a wrong answer to me,” the gun shifted dangerously.

“Nǐmen zóu tài quài de shíhòu wǒ jŭxíng le chē de bǎoxiǎngāng!”

“When we went too fast for him to keep up he held onto car bumpers,” Maxwell said.

Jacobi accepted the answer and went on, “What do you know about us?”

“Nǐmen de míngzì! Nǐmen shì méiguǒ rén, zāi mài wŭqi, mài géi liānméng nǐmen de qiāng,” the boy provided, every detail coming slowly, like an extracted molar, his eyes never leaving Jacobi’s gun.  

“He knows our names,” Maxwell said, “he knows we’re Americans, he knows we’ve got weapons, and that we’re aiding the People’s Coalition.”

“What are they?  What are our names?” asked Jacobi.

“Sophia Hopper and Albert Nobel,” the boy said.

“Shit,” Jacobi muttered, pronouncing every letter down to the hard “T.”  A beat of quiet then, more subdued than before, “Alright, kid, what is _your_ name?”

“L-Li Haojun,” the boy managed.

Jacobi paused. Maxwell glanced up and saw his brow furrowed. “Last time we spoke to our contact...who was he with?  What was the name of that Coalition higher up?”

Maxwell blinked. It was the same surname, but Li was common name.  Then again, what were the odds that a boy named Li who knew to follow them was unrelated to the man named Li who was waiting for them with the People’s Coalition of Freedom?  

“Li Yongming,” Maxwell said slowly.  Jacobi’s eyes were on the boy’s face.  Haojun’s eyes widened then narrowed.  Jacobi saw that and flashed a cruel smile.

“That’s gotta be dear old dad, huh?” Jacobi asked.  Haojun did not respond. He became tight-lipped, his mouth a flat unkind line. His eyes were swollen with tears.  Jacobi sighed and cocked the gun. “Is that your dad?  We’re going to find out one way or another. Either you tell us now or I ask Yongming when I show him what’s left of you.”

“Tā shì wǒ de bàba.” The boy shouted, and Maxwell drowned out the shout with the radio in case anyone on the street was close enough to hear.

“He says Yongming is his father,” Maxwell told Jacobi.  

“Why’s he got you spying on us?” Jacobi pressed.

“Wǒ bú shì!”

“He says he wasn’t spying.”

“Following and watching us without permission?  That, Li Haojun, is the _definition_ of spying.  Why does dad have you spying on us?” he repeated testily.  

“Nà... tā... Tāmen shì... Tāmen shì rénmín zìyóu liānméng...” the boy stammered.

Maxwell waited for the boy to finish.  When nothing more came she said, “He says something about the Coalition and his father.  But that’s all.”

Jacobi waited while the boy floundered.

Then Jacobi growled in frustration.  A gunshot rang out, hung in the air, Maxwell’s eyes went wide.  She had to stop herself from slamming on the gas.  She didn’t make a sound but her heart pounded.  The boy let out a hoarse cry.  Maxwell finally managed to check the rearview mirror and let out a sigh of relief.  Jacobi missed. He had intentionally fired into the seat just in front of the Haojun.  The boy pressed himself as far against the door as he could but his bound hands meant he couldn’t fumble the lock or handle quickly enough. Jacobi grabbed Haojun’s collar and hauled him back to the middle seat, placing him so that the bullet hole was directly between his legs. Another silent threat.

“I don’t miss twice,” Jacobi promised.

“Nà yé shì duì de. Nǐ xìngyùn tā méi shè le nǐ. ,” Maxwell said.  (“That’s also true, you’re lucky he didn’t shoot you.”)

“Why does he have you following us?” Jacobi asked.

“Tāmen de qíngkuàng shì tài wéixiǎn! Zhèngfǔ gen wǒ bàba yào tā bāng tāmen mǎng yīnwèi tāmen zhidào le! Tāmen zhidào huì yǒu huìhé. Shì ge xiànjǐng!” he shouted, each word was pulled painfully through him, brought tears to his eyes.

“He says the People’s Coalition for Freedom are in danger...the government came to his father for his help…” Maxwell found Jacobi’s eyes, “They know about the drop!  We’re walking into a trap!” Maxwell translated.  They were in far worse trouble than she suspected.  Not only did he know their fake names, but there was a chance the government did too.  

Then came a long moment in which the only sound was the Haojun’s sobbing.  Jacobi glanced at Maxwell, the gun lowering so that it was pointed at the boy’s chest rather than his head.  “Pull over,” he said hoarsely.  

She stopped the car on the shoulder; they were on an unoccupied stretch of road and Maxwell wasn’t worried someone might find them in the few minutes they would be stopped.  “What are we doing with him?” Maxwell asked quietly.

Jacobi looked back at Haojun, raising the gun again, pressing the muzzle to the boy’s skin.  Now was the moment of truth.  Maxwell’s heart caught in her chest.  Jacobi kept the gun to the boy’s forehead for a few moments then he sighed and switched the safety back on.  He holstered his gun and both Maxwell and Haojun let out low breaths of relief.

“Hopper, can you pass me the duct-tape from my bag?” he asked.  She passed it back to him through the divider.  Jacobi tore a slab of the shiny gray tape and then slapped it across the boy’s lips.  Jacobi buckled Haojun into the middle seat, just to make extra sure he could not get out. Then he exited car and climbed into the passenger’s seat besides Maxwell.  Before Jacobi said anything, he made sure the divide between the front and back was closed and sealed.  The boy wouldn’t be able to hear anything if the car was up to GF’s snuff.  

The boy was watching them through the glass.  Jacobi waved cheekily at him. He looked over at Maxwell, the smile disappearing.  “Welp.”

“Yep,” Maxwell agreed as they pulled out.

“So we’ll call Huang tell him they’ve got a leak…”

“Obviously,” Maxwell sighed.

“Li Yongming…I think I spoke to him once,” Jacobi sighed.  “He’s one of their inner circle and he’s been screwing them over.  This whole thing could go very, very bad, very, very fast.”

“You can’t be thinking about calling for extraction?” Maxwell asked, glancing over at him.

“What?  No!  Are you kidding?!”

“Oh, good, for a second I got worried that you weren’t being cavalier enough.”

“I am always cavalier,” he assured her.

“So, we’ll call Huang, get the leak plugged—“

“And Li Yongming plugged,” Jacobi added.  “And get a new meet-up.”  

As Maxwell drove aimlessly, Jacobi filled Huang Zhonghao in on the situation.  The conversation had been long and there was much deliberation.  Jacobi and Maxwell even heard the distant voice of the woman herself, Xie Yuxia, commander of the People’s Coalition for Freedom.  A new arrangement was made.  Xie Yuxia demanded that Li Yongming be dealt with.  They would not be taken down now.  They would not be stopped.  There was shouting, arguing, pleading.  

“Yǔxià! Xiè wuzhǎng! Bù kěnéng de! Wǒ méi - bù shì wǒ yà!”  A man’s voice, it must have been Li Yongming.  (“Yuxia!   Commander Xie!  It isn’t true!  I didn’t – I wouldn’t!”)

“Nǐde érzi gēn tāmen dōu shuō le!” A woman’s voice, hot as fire.  (“Your son told them everything!”)

“Qīng lǐjiě wǒ!”   (“Please understand me!”)

“Yóu shénmè lǐjiě de? Méi shénmè! Nǐ shī pàntú! Húndàn!”  (“Understand what?!  There’s nothing to understand!  You’re a traitor!  You’re a heartless bastard!”)

“Bù shī nàme jiǎndān!”  (“It’s not that simple!”)

“Nǐ zěnme něng zhèyàng!”  (“How can you be like this!”)

“Wǒ bìxu de. Wǒmen huì bèi tíngzhǐ. Wuzhǎng... Liānméng huì bēngkuì. Wo zěnme zhèyàng jìxù?”  (“I have to. we will be stopped.  Commander... the Coalition will be destroyed.  How could I continue like this?”)

“Nuòfū!”  (“Coward!”)

“Kěnéng à,” a pause.  The man’s voice became extremely resigned. “Nǐ kěyǐ wúsuǒwèi gàn, danshi nǐ bìxu gēn dàjiā shuō bù kěyǐ dǎrǎo wǒde érzi.”  (“Maybe...Do what you want, but tell them to leave my son alone.”)

A long pause.  Then…

…a distant gunshot.  

There was no way to be certain, but Maxwell was sure that that was the end of Li Yongming.  She glanced in the rearview mirror at Haojun.  He looked tired and afraid.  Too exhausted for anger anymore.  But his expression was no different than a few minutes before.  He had no idea what had just happened.  

Not everyone hated their family.  Not everyone had a restraining order against them.  Not everyone was bullied and abused.  Li Haojun — or JunJun, as the Coalition kept affectionately referring to him as they grappled with the idea that Li Yongming had turned on them — might love his father very much.  The picture they had painted through the conversations Maxwell overheard was that of a warm family, a loving family, but a small one.  Yongming’s wife, Haojun’s mother, seemed to not be in the equation.  Maxwell hadn’t heard her mentioned.  But everyone who spoke called Haojun “JunJun” and “Little Brother.”  Yongming was given similar terms of endearment, “Big Brother” by some, “uncle” by others, “Sir” among the lower level members.  The image Maxwell got was that the organization had formed something like a family, a family the boy was a part of, and that he cared deeply for his father, the man the Coalition had just killed.

And soon Haojun would find out that his father was dead.  Murdered.  

And he would know that _he_ was the reason his father was discovered and killed, that his best intentions had damned someone he cared about, perhaps the person he loved most.  Maxwell felt pity stab her heart for a moment, but she forced it away.  In the end, no matter how good you were, it only took one mistake.

Li Yongming almost certainly had good reason for defecting: money, power, maybe even just the promise of continued existence.  Maxwell didn’t blame him.  She would have made the same decision, or, rather; she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to get involved with a fringe resistance group in the first place.  

And she supposed that was what stupidity got you in the end.  It wasn’t Haojun’s fault; not really. This sort of thing always ended this way.  If he didn’t die at the hands of the Coalition, he would have died later when the government brought the Coalition down.  It was just a matter of deciding who pulled the trigger.

“Now for JunJun,” Jacobi said, following Maxwell’s gaze to the backseat.  “What do you think?  Should we hand him over?”

“Let’s just cut him loose,” Maxwell answered in frustration.  She couldn’t put up with much more of the inner angst the child was causing her.  

“Fine by me,” Jacobi agreed.

They pulled off the road and into a patch of frozen, broken sorghum.  Maxwell stopped the car by the roadside and kept watch while Jacobi dragged Haojun into the ruined plants.  She heard the ice crunch under foot, Jacobi’s determined footsteps and the boy’s hesitant ones, and then they were out of sight and out of earshot.  A minute or so later, Jacobi was back.  “Let’s go,” he said, climbing back in.   

“Where’d you send him?” Maxwell asked.  

He shrugged, “Away.  He took off running.”

“It’ll take him a long time to get home,” Maxwell said, trying to convince herself as well as Jacobi.  

“Unless we screwed up big time,” Jacobi muttered.

“We didn’t need to kill him, Jacobi,” Maxwell assured him.  

Jacobi looked up at her.  She could see the uncertainty in his eyes, heavy in his gaze.  Jacobi was full of insecurity, of fear, of self-doubt.  He was always looking for an example.  He would never admit it.  Maxwell would never tell him.  But there was a vulnerability under Jacobi’s cocksure attitude.  “Major Kepler—“

“Isn’t here,” Maxwell reminded him.  “It wasn’t his decision.  It was yours, Daniel.”

“And you think I made the right one?” he asked.

“This isn’t about what I think,” Maxwell said.  

“But…”

“But yes, I do.  He didn’t have to die,” Maxwell repeated.

“Yeah,” Jacobi said.  There was a long silence, “yeah, okay.”  Another pause. Then, “Okay.”  He took a deep breath and his expression became flatter, as if the dark thought had passed.  Then Jacobi sighed, “We should swap to two backup identities.”

“First time for everything,” Maxwell said, pulling them out of the brush.  

A few miles away, they pulled over beside a small lake.  Jacobi lit a fire and coaxed it to a size that could entirely engulf the documents without difficulty.  He tossed Albert Nobel’s passport and driver’s license in.  The documents twisted and burned, smoldered and reduced to ash.  All proof of Albert Nobel...gone.  Literally up in smoke.  The man ceased to exist.  Maxwell followed suit and Sophia Hopper disappeared as well.  As Jacobi extinguished the fire, Maxwell crossed to the lake and selected a heavy rock.  She threw it with all her might onto the frozen surface.  It broke a hole through the ice.  She dusted her hands off on her pants, removed her left glove and the fake engagement ring.  

“Gonna _Harold and Maude_ it?” Jacobi asked, coming up beside her.  

“I was thinking _Titanic,_ ” Maxwell threw the ring into the hole she’d made with the rock.  

“Either way. Neither’s good,” Jacobi shrugged.

Maxwell had never seen _Harold and Maude_ , but she couldn’t help but agree on his analysis of _Titanic_ .  She vividly remembered when _Titanic_ was released in the mid-1990s.  It was one of the first times she wondered if something was wrong with her.  She never believed her parents when they told her she was strange, and she never sought their approval when they so clearly wouldn’t give it.  But when everyone else was so intensely interested in this _one thing_ that she could not begin to understand or hold any interest in, it made her wonder if maybe she was incorrect.  

It happened sometimes, when she was younger.  She would become aware of where she was in the world, on the outside looking in, and wonder if there was something wrong with her.  If she wasn’t just different but, somehow, innately faulty.  Maybe it hadn’t been the first time, but it was the first time she was so agonizingly aware of it.  The first time it had been so vivid and visceral.

She only decided to see _Titanic_ when her parents forbade it.  She hadn’t been allowed to, even when everyone else had.  Nothing anyone told her made the movie seem interesting or compelling.  But the fact that her parents were so deadset against it made Maxwell’s curiosity spike.  She snuck into the theater under the pretense of watching something else, using her meager allowance to do so.  She regretted that choice.  There was one positive: she liked the effects – more proof that computers were amazing things. And that was long before she understood they had the potential to be sentient.

There was also one scene in it that made her realize something about herself.  Something she wouldn’t be able to articulate for years to come.  Something she still struggled to put into words.

“Do you remember when _Titanic_ was the _biggest_ deal in the world?  And everyone _begged_ their parents to see it?  It was such a big deal because it was a PG-13?  My parents wouldn’t even let us talk about it!  I remember sneaking in to see it and it was soooo bad and boring…” Maxwell looked over at Jacobi, wondering if he had the same experience that she did.  Often their lives before Goddard Futuristics, despite being nearly opposites in many ways, lined up unexpectedly.  She wondered if this was one of those times.  Evidently it wasn’t.  He was looking at her with an amused smirk, eyebrows raised.  “What?” she asked.  

“Really?” Jacobi laughed.  

“What’s so funny?” She repeated, crossing her arms.  

“Are you like 12?”

“I’m sorry I failed to make a timely _Harold and Maude_ reference,” Maxwell rolled her eyes.

“No, seriously. What year did _Titanic_ come out?”

“1997,” Maxwell said immediately, “I remember I was nine.”

“Aww!  Sometimes I forget you really _are_ a baby!” He reached out to her, threatening to pinch her cheek.  She ducked.

“I am not a baby, you’re just old,” Maxwell threw a snowball at his face.  He dodged and it hit him in the shoulder instead.  She immediately started on a second snowball.

“I turned 15 in 1997,” Jacobi told her, arming himself similarly, “I could go see all the crappy PG-13 movies I wanted.”  They hit each other with their mutual snowballs.

“Did you go see _Titanic_?” she asked grinning, brushing snow off her jacket.  

“Hell no!  What do you take me for?” Jacobi asked.  They crossed back to the car.

“A human being!  Everyone saw that movie,” Maxwell said.  She crouched down beside the car and took a small wrench from her pocket.  She went about removing the front license plate.

He opened the car door and she trusted he got the spare license plates from the glove compartment.   “I assure you I am one of the lucky few who did not see that movie,” he said, passing her the new license plate when she gestured for it.  “Everything I know about it I’ve gotten from parodies and memes.”

“You weren’t missing much.”

“I know.”  A brief pause as Maxwell worked and Jacobi pulled a hat from his pocket, shoving it over his ears for warmth.  “I _do_ remember all the guys in my class talking about Kate Winslet’s tits like they were this super big deal.”

“What did you think?” Maxwell asked, she knew the answer but it was comforting to hear him say it.

“Same thing I always think about tits,” Jacobi shrugged, “not much.”

Maxwell felt herself smile.  She would bring up that scene that made her feel so strange, she would tell Jacobi what she never told anyone else.  “There’s a scene where they fuck in a car–”

Jacobi cut her off, “Do we have to talk about _Titanic_ anymore?”

“Yes, we’re having a moment, dammit!  Now shut up and be touched!”

“Oh, _excuse me_ ,” said Jacobi sarcastically, “Continue talking about car-fucking.  I _definitely_ care.”  

“That’s better,” Maxwell said jokingly.  Then she looked away, pretending to be focused on the license plate, “There’s a scene where they fuck in a car and I thought all the girls in my class had some kind of... like they understood something?  Something I missed.  I hated that scene.  It’s not even long, but...it...it made me really uncomfortable…”  She paused in the process of removing the license plate, watching it hang there by one nut.

“I know,” said Jacobi softly.  She also knew he didn’t have so visceral a response to sex.  He wasn’t so repulsed by it.  The best she could ever hope for was a more distant disgust rather than a gut punch of discomfort.  Jacobi just seemed utterly bored by even the idea of it.  But he still fast-forwarded through sex scenes in movies for her.  He made them easier for her to look at by making fun of the fast motion.  “But it doesn’t matter.  It’s stupid.”  There was an implication that “it’s stupid.”  He meant “it’s a stupid movie” but it also meant more than that.  “It’s stupid,” it’s a stupid movie, it’s a stupid idea.  That commonplace trope that everyone needs sex and romance to make them human was untrue.  Jacobi knew it.  Maxwell knew it.  There was nothing more unnecessary in the world and, together, Jacobi and Maxwell proved it.

He passed her the new plate and took the old one.  There was a pause and then, “Was that a moment?  Do we exchange Hallmark cards now?”

“We had a moment until you ruined it with your big stupid mouth,” Maxwell said.

“I wish I could say I was sorry,” Jacobi sighed in a cloud of white smoke, “but I’m not.”

“People got mad at me when I pointed out all the dumb moments in _Titanic_ , ” Maxwell said.

Jacobi snorted, “I’m picturing little Alana Maxwell, the size of a thumbtack with giant pigtails and giant eyes complaining about inaccurate science…”

“You’re not that far off,” Maxwell said, rising.  She gave Jacobi the license plate. Jacobi went back to the lakeside and tossed it into the water as Maxwell crossed to the back bumper. “What about fifteen-year-old Daniel Jacobi?” she called as he came back to the car, “Big glasses and braces?”

Jacobi sighed, “Fifteen-year-old Daniel Jacobi was…unfortunate.  In his extremely awkward phase.”

“You _left_ the extremely awkward phase?” asked Maxwell jokingly.

“Ha, ha,” he said sarcastically. “I did, believe me.  I didn’t have braces, but I did have giant glasses, acne, and a nightmare Jewfro.”

Maxwell stopped, old plate in hand, and looked up at Jacobi, “You had a...a Jewfro?!”

“I still would if I let my hair grow out.  It’s genetics, not a fashion statement,” Jacobi assured her, taking the license plate out of her hand.  

“Let it grow out!” Maxwell urged, grinning.  

“No!” he shouted over his shoulder in annoyance.

“You should!  It would be hilarious!” Maxwell whined.

“Nope!”

“Why not?” Maxwell got to her feet, pocketed her wrench, and gave Jacobi her best attempt at puppy dog eyes as he returned to the car.

“Three reasons,” Jacobi said, taking the driver’s seat before Maxwell could beat him to it.  “One, you just said it would be ‘hilarious,’” he imitated her voice as he turned the key.   

“Because it would be,” she assured him, buckling up.

“ _Exactly._ Two, it looks stupid.  And three, do you have any idea how many times I set my hair on fire?”

“Hm,” Maxwell considered before he answered for her.

“The answer is ‘a lot.’  I set my hair on fire a lot of times.”  He turned off the radio and adjusted his seat, pushing it back.  “Wanna whip out a couple of new IDs?"

“Sure,” Maxwell pawed through the pile of passports in the bottom pouch of Jacobi’s bag.  She selected two at random, opening them to make sure they had all the right paperwork folded inside. “Ray Salk?  Chicago, Illinois?”

“Sounds fine. Who’re you?” he agreed.  

She put the passport in his coat pocket as he drove.  “Emily Liston, Trenton, New Jersey.  What’s our backstory this time?  Coworkers?

Jacobi took the deserted icy road faster than anyone would, short of Major Kepler.  Maxwell was used to it.  Jacobi was a terrible driver, but he had beaten her to the driver’s seat fair and square.  At least there was no one to tailgate on this particular stretch of road.  “Sure.  Who do we work for?  Not a tech company—“

“Or a military contractor,” she added.

“What’s something really awful?” Jacobi asked.  

“Teachers,” said Maxwell after a moment of consideration.  

“Ew,” laughed Jacobi.  

“Right?!”

“So we’ll say we’re doing a year abroad. Teaching English,” Jacobi said.  

“Perfect.” Maxwell nodded, she had certainly heard of programs like that.  

She kept looking at the side of his face, imagining him younger.  After a few drinks Jacobi was willing to tell anyone who would listen about his life as a misanthrope, show off all the psychological scars a life of being bullied left behind.  But he was never eager to say anything that made himself look bad, no matter how drunk he was.  

Embarrassment was not something Jacobi wore well.  And it meant something to her – it touched her – that he, willingly, soberly, told her about his “extremely awkward phase.”  Not to mention that the image of Jacobi with big puffy hair was extremely amusing.  When she first met him, he kept it so short you couldn’t even tell it was curly, close cropped.  Now she could certainly see how his hair, unchecked, would become a Nightmare Jewfro…and that was a phrase she would relish.  She grinned imagining it.  

Jacobi did a double take.  “You’re still thinking about my hair aren’t you?”

“Jacobi, I promise you I will be imagining it from now until the day I die.”


	7. Emily Liston & Ray Salk; Hypatia Technologies Employees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yan Mountain Range, China

 

Jacobi was a ballistics expert.  He took safety very seriously when and where it mattered without overdoing it.  He knew what rules to follow and which to ignore.  That was why he wasn’t deaf or blind yet, but it was also why he had a few more burns than most of his coworkers.  

Most of the rules pertaining to the road, on the other hand, were ignorable.  

Like speed limits.  Those just got in the way.  He became furious with people who drove too slowly, and _maybe,_ sometimes _,_ he drove a little too close.  And, yeah, if he hit them, he sure as Hell wasn’t going to stick around to exchange insurance information.  He didn’t have the money or time to waste on that!  Besides, he wasn’t even sure he _had_ insurance.  

 _Maybe,_ sometimes, he may forget to signal.  Maybe.  But he had more important things to think about when that happened.  

He certainly did not appreciate it when, during their trip through the Yan Mountains, Maxwell kept compulsively grabbing for the wheel.  She did that sometimes, but less and less often the longer they knew each other.  Now it was only when they were in places where either the road conditions weren’t great or the landscape was harsh. Or, in this case, both.

“I know what I’m doing!” he assured her testily.

“I know you do,” Maxwell said. “And what you are doing is throwing us over a cliff!”

“I am not!” he said, pointedly taking a turn away from the road edge.

“Have you ever heard of inertia, Jacobi?”

“Yes, Maxwell, shockingly I have.”

“Cars have it,” Maxwell pointed out.

“We’re _fine,_ ” he assured her.  “We just need to get there and it’s already late.  Are the trucks there?”  

She consulted her tablet.  “Estimated TOA is 23 minutes. We’ll be there in 18, unless you kill us.”

“Five bucks says I can do it in less than 15,” Jacobi grinned.

“No! I am not taking that bet!” Maxwell said.

But Jacobi wasn’t listening.

They were there in 10.

The car wasn’t terribly impressive, but Jacobi pushed it as far as it would go.  He was very good at that sort of thing.

Back home he had a green Volvo 1800 ES.  It was a good car, but Jacobi bought it from a guy who had let it fall into disastrous disrepair.  Most people would have considered it beyond help.  Jacobi refused to see it that way.  He fixed it up.  He kept it running.  He put it through its paces, sure.  Drove too fast, hit things too hard, left it a little too close to potentially dangerous experimental explosives he was about to set off.  But he kept it running.  The Volvo was often on the verge of falling apart, but it never _did_.  Because Jacobi knew what he was doing.  He was good with cars.  

They skidded to a stop in a wide mountaintop field.  Maxwell made a production of climbing shakily out of the car, clutching her chest as if she had been shocked into a heart attack, before shooting Jacobi a grin.

“Yes, I get it, you’re hilarious,” Jacobi said sarcastically. He leaned against the car, adjusting a winter cap over his ears.  The trees were thick here, some bald birch and aspen intermingled with evergreen juniper and red pine.  Over the sharp peak were other mountains, distant humps covered in snow, patched with green, almost invisible now in the dark.  The sky was cloudless.  It was bitterly cold.  A cold that bit and stung.  Jacobi was used to cold, even if he wasn’t overly fond of it.  Growing up, his family moved around the Midwest for his father’s job.  When Jacobi was twelve, his family lived in Minnesota, and this was December in Duluth cold.  The moon was high and half-full, the sky was bright with stars, but those were the brightest lights he could see.  

He wanted something hot to eat and something hotter to drink.  While they were waiting for Huang to tell them the new rendezvous point, Maxwell and he had stopped for lurou huoshao, donkey-meat sandwiches, something, he felt strongly, they should start eating in the States. It tasted basically like very good hot pastrami. And what aside from this were donkeys even good for?  He wished he still had some left, but that was hours ago.  

He was eager, too, for the trucks to get there so he could start the show.  He had quite the demonstration planned.  It wouldn’t be as stunning as _some_ he’d put on, just because of the material available, but it would be impressive.  It would be fun.  The best shows, because they were the best buyers, were for the rich men hidden from the world at large – the drug kingpins, modern slavers, the guys who dealt in blood diamonds and worse; men who traded in lives, the men who proved success was the inverse of compassion.  They had money to burn and a world of enemies to treat likewise. Those guys regularly emptied the shelves at GF and signed Jacobi’s paychecks for years to come.   After that, the best customers were governments, Third- or First-world, it didn’t matter.  They were only slightly more scrupulous than the private buyers.  Resistance groups like this?  They scrimped and saved – used every penny their members had – to put themselves on anything close to the same level as their opponents.  Poor idiots, they never realized they weren’t ready for _that_ particular game until they had already lost.  Jacobi could go for a private buyer, but this would do.  

He was slightly concerned about Vesta.  The altitude made a thermobaric weapon less than ideal, but he would bury it in the middle of the display.  The previous meeting place would have been so much better.  They would have been able to bury the mines in the icy ground, as well.  The ground at the prior site had already been prepared.  Maxwell was going to kill him when he told her they had to dig in the snow.  Li Yongming just _had_ to go Benedict Arnold on them.  He couldn’t wait like two more weeks for his change of heart?

Maxwell stomped her feet trying to keep warm. “They better show up soon,” Maxwell said. “The sooner we do this the better.”

Jacobi grinned. Oh, the sooner they did it the better was certainly true. He wanted to get his show underway.

“Salk,” she said studying the look on his face. “How long is this going to take?”

“That depends,” he shrugged.

“Depends on what?  When the convoy gets here or how stupidly and pointlessly overdramatic your display is going to be?” Maxwell asked.

“It will not be stupid, pointless, or _over_ dramatic.  It will be _appropriately_ dramatic.  Fitting the importance of the situation and the power of the equipment,” Jacobi assured her.

Maxwell sighed.  “Sometimes I regret hanging out with you.” she said, rubbing her forehead.  Then her gaze narrowed slightly at the tree line.  “There!  There’s the signal!”  A flashlight in the woods, blinking.  Then it traced a character in the air, Jacobi only knew from the arrangements that it was a hànzì: “自.”  

Jacobi wasn’t surprised Maxwell spotted it first.  Maxwell’s eyes, like so many things about her, were almost unnaturally good.  Jacobi was the third best marksman in all of the Strategic Intelligence Division, sections 1 through 5.  The second best was Warren Kepler.  And the person who demolished even their most accurate shots, who could take out a postage stamp at 500 yards, was Alana Maxwell.  

Jacobi took his flashlight from his belt and returned the signal.  A Roman “S.”   

A second light responded.  “仁.”  

Jacobi returned with an “H.”  

The light went out, Jacobi and Maxwell could now approach without getting shot.  The group in the trees came closer as well, meeting Jacobi and Maxwell half-way.  They were a group of five.  In the dark it was hard to make out features beyond hazy, bulky winter shapes and height differences.  Jacobi, himself, was the tallest in the group, but the man who spoke first was only a little shorter, probably in the high fives.  

“Mr. Salk and Dr. Liston, I presume?” he asked in flawless English.  Jacobi recognized the voice, Huang Zhonghao.  “Shall we get some light?”

“I think that would be best,” said Maxwell, hunkered against the cold.  

“Mīngxǐ, qīng bà fàn guāng dēng dǎ kāi,” he said, nodding to one of the smaller shapes.  It pressed a button on a glowing smartphone.  The clearing lit up with the loud “ _Bang_ ” of floodlights.  Jacobi winced against the sudden light, blinked spots from his eyes.  Instinctively, one hand went up to shade his eyes, but the other nearly reached for his gun.  He stuffed it back into his pocket, hoping they hadn’t noticed.  When his vision cleared, Jacobi got a good look at Huang. Finally, Jacobi had a face to put to the name and voice.  Huang had a narrow face and narrow frame, a sharp chin and neat black hair with a sharp part.

“I am Huang Zhonghao, but I you probably worked that out already,” he said, offering his hand.

Maxwell took it and shook, “Yes.”  

Jacobi took it in turn.  “Who are your friends?” he asked, nodding towards the assembled four.

“Misters Hu Maihong and Zhang Donghui and Ms. Wang Mingxi and Ms. Guo Namei,” Huang provided, gesturing to each.  Hu was exceptionally average looking: average height, average weight, average overall appearance.  Zhang was small and broad with a square jaw and a long scar on his neck.  Wang was of medium height with short black hair cut into a bob.  She had on unexpectedly immaculate makeup, including fire-engine red lipstick on her plump lips.  They all shook Jacobi’s hand except Guo, who made a point of just nodding.  She was about Maxwell’s height, but built larger.  Her face was round and her expression seemed to be set in a scowl.  She was young, probably no more than eighteen.  Probably unflinchingly dedicated and massively self-important.  Jacobi had seen the type before.  They never got along with him.  If she lived long enough, eventually she’d come around.  Every Cause was just a cause in the end.  The capital letter faded as the novelty wore off, as reality set in.  

And if it didn’t?  

If it didn’t, those were the ones to look out for.  They were the ones who were really dangerous.  They would probably Die for the Cause, and they would almost definitely kill for it.  Jacobi and Maxwell never killed outside the job and they always planned on going home afterward.  They were extremely dangerous, but that danger had a limit.  They weren’t stupid and they weren’t vicious.  People with Causes?  They killed on their own.  And they were ready to die.  Jacobi didn’t trust anyone who truly Believed in something.

He knew from Guo’s expression, the intensity in her gaze, that she was new, that at this moment she thought she was one of those people.  But he didn’t yet know (and she probably didn’t know herself) if she would grow out of it or grow deeper into it.  

They made small talk until the two trucks carrying Jacobi’s demos arrived.  Huang was, as he had been on the radio, very personable and friendly, polite.  Wang was overly excitable.  Guo scowled.  Hu quietly nodded along.  Zhang radiated an hot temper that made Jacobi raise his eyebrows.

The trucks came.  And suddenly Jacobi didn’t feel cold anymore.  Excitement was running like electricity through his every atom.  He helped with the unloading. Maxwell joined him in the setting up.  They had done this before.  A lot.  It started out very mundane, unloading a truck, unsecuring a tarp, setting up targets, securing human models into the dirt, burying mines…it was, at least, mundane for them.  Maxwell put on some music and popped in one earbud.  Jacobi could hear the sounds of a synthesizer and drum machine through the dangling earphone.  When they were done unloading, both GF drivers packed into one of the trucks and drove off.  They would make their way to Beijing where the trucks would disappear into the millions of others.  The drivers would go back to their desk jobs at whatever branch and department of Goddard Futuristics they worked for.  The second truck was left for Jacobi and Maxwell.  

Jacobi put on a bandolier slung with grenades.  He lifted a Viduus rocket and sighed happily, his breath a cloud in front of him.  He fitted the rocket into a Spes launcher.  

“Let me guess,” said Maxwell, leaning across the shovel she had just used to bury his mines, “you love the smell of napalm in the morning?”

“Shush, you,” he said to Maxwell, still smiling. “Alright!” he called louder to the chatting Coalition members.  Guo was predictably quiet.   “If you will all turn your attention to the Center Ring, we’ll get this show underway!  You have very kindly purchased some of Hypatia Technologies’ finest weaponry and before the final sale goes through, it is my honor to show you what you are purchasing.  Please put on your ear protection and gas-masks now, it’s going to get very loud and it’s going to get very toxic.” After he finished this last sentence, he pulled on the modified M40 protective mask dangling around his neck, quickly, expertly, familiarly.  Then he put on his battered black ear protection.  It’d seen more countries than most people did.  He could get a new pair, but he was somewhat sentimental about them.  They were his and they’d been through a lot together.

Maxwell took a moment longer to fit her M50 mask over her face.  Jacobi had actually gotten it for her as part of her birthday present last year.  He got her a kit of bits and bobs for her soldering tools, the gift that she had “strongly hinted” she wanted.  She did so by texting the Amazon link to him at least ten times a day with an exponentially increasing number of exclamation points after it, followed immediately by “ _April 13,_ ” then “ _DO IT,_ ” then “ _B < _“.  But he also got her an M50 Joint Service General Purpose Mask.  Mostly so that she could open something that wasn’t the soldering tools first, but also because it did actually come in handy when they were on missions together.  

She rolled her eyes dramatically behind the lenses of her mask at Jacobi’s showmanship, fitting her ear protection over her head and hair.  The Coalition couldn’t see her face. To them, Maxwell was at attention, now standing straight and ready for his demonstration with as much interest as they were.  She could make all the faces at him she wanted, but from the outside it looked like they were consummate professionals.  He was grateful Maxwell was so willing to play along.  But now he was too excited to properly appreciate it.

He shouldered the launcher.  It was on the heavier side, but that was from an added safety precaution that let the user fire within a tight space without risking a burn or worse.  A good addition if you planned on firing out windows or around corners. Viduus was an anti-armor warhead, specially designed to combat the defensive measures modern tanks used against them.  The closest to a tank they had available was the GF car.  It would still explode pretty gloriously, but he couldn’t show off the countermeasures properly.  

He _could,_ however, show off how it wasn’t triggered by anything but a armored or metal target, cutting through soft ones.  “Soft” targets.  That was such a clean way of saying it.  They might as well call them “squishy” targets. It was just jargon for “unarmed humans.”  That was why Jacobi had set up a gelatin human dummy in front of the car.  Jacobi brought the sites up to his goggled eye.  The dummy’s center of mass was directly in the crosshairs.  

With one hand Jacobi gave the countdown.  The Close Range Engagement Operations numbers.  “5” an opened hand.  “4” all but the thumb.  “3” middle, pointer, thumb.  “2” the symbol for “victory” and “peace.”  “1” just the pointer.  Then…

Jacobi smirked below his mask and squeezed the trigger.  

Inside the guts of the launcher, the electro-mechanical mechanism triggered.  The rocket fired.  A roar at over 150 decibels.  A flash of light and heat.  It cut through the gelatin human leaving a perfect hole in the abdomen, then collided with the car beyond.  The car was instantly reduced to fragments and ash, throwing up a tongue of flame and a fountain of metal.  The gelatin man was splintered with debris and hurled away from the blast.  Because it was translucent, Jacobi could see the slanted barbs of metal and plastic in the body.  That would cut straight through the liver, that sucker would have ruptured a lung, this chunk, a through-and-through, would’ve tossed intestine out onto the snow.  Between the dozens of fragments, the hole in his abdomen, the blackened back, and the fact that the blast threw it a good seventy feet, if the figure had been an actual person, there was no chance he would have survived.  And all in a few seconds.  The crowd was applauding. Jacobi couldn’t hear it through his earmuffs, but he could see them clapping and cheering.  With good reason.  Both the Spres and Viduus were his designs.  And Daniel Jacobi was very good at his job.

The rest of the display went perfectly.   

Napalm launched from the Fulgora clung to its gelatin target, roasting it at over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  And the firestorm, the whirlwind of flame, the toxic carbon monoxide winds, consumed the dummies nearby. He let Huang set off the Cronus bomb, handing over the digital wristwatch that allowed the wearer to set a delay or instantly explode the bomb into sharp debris and what essentially amounted to good ol’ hardware store nails made of depleted uranium.  He was overzealous with the Mania flamethrower, but the most Maxwell did was duck, used to his displays and used to him.  She subtly and calmly tossed him the extinguisher when he was done.  

The Justitia assault rifle set off the deeply buried Messor mines, displaying the power of one and the sensitivity of the other.  Maxwell’s sharpshooting skills showed off the Oraculum Sniper Rifle.  14.5×114mm caliber.  A max range of nearly 8,500 feet.  Unfortunately it was impossible to get that far, but the closer range meant the spread and destructive power of the immense bullet was showcased wonderfully.  And she excelled at showing the Mercury DMR’s speed.   The Diana and Libitina, cluster munitions, banned in most of the civilized world, did their jobs well.  

Diana was Jacobi’s favorite of the two.  Of _many_.  It was a very good bomb.  An excellent bomb.  One of his own designs and one of his favorites.  Simple.  Functional.  Fantastic.  It dropped dozens of bomblets over a vast distance, or an instant firestorm in one location that consumed everything.  It could be set to “hunt” a specific target huge distances, raining fire on it from above.  It was full of good ol’ fashioned Willie Pete, which burned at 5,000 plus degrees Fahrenheit.  Its flame was toxic.  The burns it left would absorb the white phosphorous and cause liver failure.  Its smoke burned the breather from the inside out.  

But Jacobi was never really concerned with the human damage.  That was a side effect.  It wasn’t the important part.  The important part was the detonation itself.  That sublime, almost uncanny, flame.

 _Other_ people were looking for the kill.  Kepler loved the hunt, loved the pain, loved the kill.  He wanted blood. But Jacobi always privately thought Kepler and other people looking for casualties were missing the point.  The blast. The immediate chaos.  The explosion.  The force.  The roaring flame.  The scorched earth.  The smell it left in the air.  The imprint it burned into your eyes.  The heat.  The _power_ .   _That_ was what weapons and ballistics were for.  It was like the God described in the Torah.

A bush burning like white phosphorous… _that_ would make any man listen.

And through them all to his conclusion with the largest toy in their new arsenal: Honos, a Surface-to-Surface missile.  Real fireworks.  As he watched it destroy the landscape, Jacobi wondered if, 1,873 years ago, the alchemist Wei Boyang ever dreamed of _this._  If he could possibly imagine how his little concoction of sulfur and saltpeter would evolve.  He would be proud.  How couldn’t he be?

The cacophony of noise and destruction.  The spectacle beyond words.  When all was said and done, Jacobi closed up his bomb kit, his heart pounding in his chest, the cold long since shaken off.  

He could feel himself smiling, broadly, a kid’s smile.  It was amazing how some things never lost their novelty, how some things remained as intense and indescribably fantastic as they were the very first time.  He still felt like Dan Jacobi in his backyard in Wisconsin making his very first aerosol flamethrower. More than two decades hadn’t dulled his affection for fire. So much else had hardened, but this hadn’t.  Things Breaking Other Things still sent the best kind of chills through him.  

He wondered if he looked like Alana did when she got wrapped up in a project, when she was finally able to make a program work, when she gave her AIs yet another super-power.  That starry eyed stare.  That absolute unblinking obsession.  That look of satisfaction and joy.  He wondered if it was the same feeling.  They removed their ear protection, left on the gas masks.  

He picked through the debris for anything damning or identifiable as Maxwell finished off the sale.  She consulted her tablet and watched as “Hypatia Technologies’’” Swiss bank account filled.  When the exchange was done, she called out to Jacobi and gave him a nod and an okay sign.  She radioed the other trucks, sent them off to their destinations.

“Ready when you are,” Maxwell said, but she wasn’t forcing him out.  

“Yeah, okay, let’s go.” Jacobi stepped out of his pillar of scorched earth.  

Huang stopped them before they climbed into the remaining truck. “Are you hungry?”

Jacobi looked back at him.  “I could eat.  Liston?”

“Definitely,” Maxwell agreed, stepping down from the truck.  

“We have a base not far from here.  Xie Yuxia herself will be there.”  

That impressed neither Jacobi nor Maxwell, but the promise of free food plus the added bonus of free booze that was quickly added to the pot meant that neither of them was going to turn it down.  During the trip to the base, Guo rode with them in their truck while the others rode in the SUV they came in.  She drilled them in Mandarin and accented, but nearly flawless, English, asking about their jobs and why they were there.  Jacobi responded with characteristic irreverence.  Maxwell was a little better, providing brief answers, mostly lies, but believable lies.  Maxwell was patient.  She had to be, she put up with him every damn day of her life.  Jacobi ran out of patience a long time ago, and it delved into negative amounts when he was hungry.  

The booze had better be worth it.   


	8. Unknown Agents; Security Threats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ministry of Public Security Station, Luanping County, Hebei, China

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figure when all the characters involved are speaking Mandarin it's less confusing to just have everything in English. I hope that doesn't make the rest of the fic more confusing ^^;

 

“Tell them what you told me,” said Police Sergeant Xu Xuemei.  She had a friendly smile and shining eyes.  Haojun liked her best of all the officers he had spoken to at the police station.

And there were a lot of them.  

Over the past few hours, he spoke to what felt like dozens and dozens of uniformed men and women. And that was _before_ the People’s Liberation Army had arrived.  Now there were men and women from the army standing around him, too, asking questions, trying to get every detail out of him.  They gave him food and soda, they let him pet a police dog, they spoke to him gently, but firmly.  Haojun knew they were trying to get information out of him, but he was too shaken to protest.  Besides, he knew he had to tell them everything; that was what his father’s final wish had been.  So he spoke to them more readily than he had the Coalition’s new partners.  

Everything was backwards now.  

All his life, Haojun had been taught the police and the PLA were his enemies.  He should be afraid of them, but now they were probably the only friends he had in the world.  

Haojun, Sergeant Xu, and three soldiers were sitting in a small, dark room in plastic chairs at a plastic table.  Haojun didn’t know how long he’d been sitting in this exact spot, but it felt like hours.  Maybe longer.  There weren’t any windows and there wasn’t a clock to tell him.  How long could they keep him in a room like this?  Forever.  They were in charge of everyone in China and he was just a little kid.  By now, it had to be at least early evening, maybe even later.  Hours had gone by since the Americans kidnapped him and dumped him in the sorghum field.

After that bastard Nobel cut him loose, he ran.  He ran and he thought he would never stop.  His throat ached from crying.  His wrists were bruised and lacerated from the plastic tie.  He thought he could still feel that cold pistol pressed against his forehead.  He had never been more afraid in his life.  

He made it to a nearby town he saw out the window once Nobel had gone into the front seat.  He wished he knew what they had been saying in the car.  What they had done.  But he was also afraid to know the truth.

He used a phone at a gas station in the village.  First he tried his father.  There was no answer.  His heart had pounded in his chest.  He refused to think of the worst yet.  Not until he had to.

And he would have to very soon.  

Next, he called a neighbor.  The neighbor, an elderly widow named Bai Xinran, whom he affectionately referred to as Grandmother, told him that something must have happened in the apartment he shared with his father.  When she came home from her regular afternoon walk, the door was opened a crack, something that would never happen under normal circumstances in the Li house.  Haojun felt his blood freeze in his veins.  His heart caught.  He asked if his uncle, Bai Xinran’s son, Bai Chenming, could come and get him.  Uncle Chenming, his wife, and baby son lived close by Grandmother Xinran and, unlike her, both Uncle Chenming and his wife could drive.  

Haojun realized he was almost two hours away from their home in Luanping in a town called Xinzhangzixiang, but Uncle Chenming was more than willing to get him out of trouble.  He was very worried about Haojun.  In the car on the way back, he comforted the boy as best he could, but it didn’t help.  Not when Haojun was so afraid of what might have happened to his father.  Haojun lied about why he was so far away from home.  In his current state, he could barely remember what he had said.  He knew none of the Bai family believed him, and they watched him as he stepped into the ruined apartment.  

Someone had ripped through the apartment like a hurricane.  Furniture was overturned.  Cabinets had their drawers thrown open and the contents spilled onto the floor.  His father’s bed had been stripped and the fabric torn.  Even the curtains had been pulled off the windows.  In his office, what had once been his mother’s office and had been, when they bought the apartment, a walk-in closet, his father’s filing cabinet had been broken into and emptied. Haojun had no idea what was in that cabinet except that it was _important_.  Whenever his father met with the government agents, they swapped documents and flash drives and it all went into that cabinet. Old out, new in. Now it had been ransacked, overturned, opened, and emptied. Haojun’s own room was the only one untouched.  Nothing was out of place.  It felt more wrong that it was so proper and neat, especially when, sitting on his bed, he could see the destruction beyond his door.  

Worst of all was what was waiting for him in the kitchen.  

There were two letters for him, both placed on the kitchen table, the table where he and his father ate every morning. The table was still upright in the chaos.  He spotted the letters before Uncle Chenming did and grabbed them quickly.  When Chenming stepped into the hallway to call the police, Haojun looked the letters over.  Haojun didn’t want him to know about the letters at all.

They were written by two different people.  One had Haojun’s name written out in his father’s clean calligraphy.  His handwriting was unmistakable, neat but without flourish.  One could call it practical or utilitarian.  The letter had been sealed with tape, but the tape had been cleanly slit, presumably with a knife, before Haojun had gotten to it.  The other letter had his name in much nicer, fancier, calligraphy.  The calligraphy belonged to Wang Mingxi, a member of the Coalition.  He knew this because he had always thought it was the most beautiful handwriting anyone could ever have.  His name looked so different in the two scripts.  The same characters, but it was almost as if they had changed clothes; one outfit for work, one for special occasions. He quickly opened his father’s letter.  His heart was pounding.  His throat was tight.  

_Haojun -_

_If you are reading this, something terrible has happened. The Coalition has been informed of my betrayal.  They will not excuse me.  They will not go easy on me.  If you are reading this, I may well be dead._

 

Haojun nearly stopped reading there, but forced himself to continue before horror and sorrow made it impossible to go on.  He had to be strong, because there was no one left to be strong for him.  And while Haojun had never known it to be true before, maybe his father was wrong.  He did say, “may be dead.”  It wasn’t absolute yet.  He kept reading.

 

_I need you to go to the nearest police station and ask them to find Captain Jiang Yuwen of the PLA. She has been my contact.  I love you, Haojun. Your mother loved you, too. Stay safe.  I love you with all my heart and soul. Goodbye._

_-your father_

 

There was a long period in which Haojun stood there in silence, staring at the words on the page, barely able to process their meaning. 

The other letter was still wet, both ink and tears.  That had terrified Haojun.  Someone could still be there.  They hadn’t left very long ago.  When Uncle Chenming came back into the apartment, Haojun jumped and nearly ran out. He cursed himself for being so afraid and stuffed the letter into the pocket of his hoodie.  It seemed to cool and dry, as if the distance put between Haojun and Big Sister Mingxi could be felt through the page.  

“The police will be here shortly,” Chengming said very seriously.  He looked into Haojun’s face.  Haojun was trying to will Chenming out of the room so he could read the other letter.  “Is something else wrong?”

He swallowed his anxiety and the knot growing in his throat.  “I’m alright,” he said carefully.  

“Good…I’m going to wait outside for the police.  Tell my mother or my wife if you need anything.”

“I will,” Haojun said, without really hearing himself.  He needed to be brave if he was alone in the world.  He had to be strong for his father.  And that brought tears to his eyes again.  

Could he really be alone?  Could his father really be…? He expected to see him round the doorway.  He wanted to run and jump into his arms and be promised that everything was okay.  Desperately, he hoped that maybe the second letter would reveal that this was all some kind of a mistake or a misunderstanding.  Maybe Mingxi’s tears were because she felt bad about the destruction she foolishly caused.  He carefully opened the letter.  

 

_JunJun -_

_We are sorry. We never wanted it to come to this. Please, please forgive us. Continue your life. Be safe. Be healthy. Eat well.  Find happiness and love.  We will not look for you. We will not hurt you.  We still love you, just as we loved your mother and even your father.  We are sorry.  We are all so sorry._

_-Big Sister Mingxi and Uncle_ _Maihong_  

 

They weren’t sorry.  If they were sorry, they wouldn’t have done this.  If they were sorry, his father wouldn’t be in danger – or worse.  If they were sorry, they wouldn’t have put everyone else before his father.  He knew, because he had been raised to know, that the People’s Coalition of Freedom fought for justice for all.  They fought to protect the living and avenge the dead.  They fought for the whole of the Chinese people: Han, Hui, Yi, Yao, Uyghur, Manchu, Mongol, Tujia, Tibetan, and everyone else.  They fought for freedom.  They fought for the truth.  But right now, Haojun felt as if they fought for everyone but him.  That everyone else cost him his father.  That justice for all meant justice for everyone else.  He felt that they were wrong and that this one life mattered as much as the whole.  That maybe each person, or at least his father, mattered as much as every person.  His whole world had changed so quickly it made him feel almost light-headed.  

Xie Yuxia wasn’t sorry for what the Coalition had done.  The woman he once called his Big Sister probably would have done it again.  She probably would order Li Yongming dead a thousand times if she had to.  He was terrified, he was angry, he was heartbroken.  Tears welled up in his eyes again and he cried freely and alone in the ruined kitchen.  He crumpled the letter in his fist and threw it into the trash.  He would never forgive any of them for this.  Not Yuxia, not Zhonghao, not Donghui, not Namei, not even Mingxi or Maihong to whom he had always been close.   Not any of them.  

When the police came and the Bai family was out of earshot, Haojun told the officers everything he knew.  They were shocked. They took him down to the police station and asked him to tell his story again.  And he did.  Then they gathered even more people and Haojun had to tell the story a third time.  

And again.

And again.  

Each time to a larger crowd.  Now the crowd was small again, but the people in it made his heart pound in his chest so hard and so loudly, he thought Captain Jiang and her associates would be able to hear it.  

He looked from Xu to the three people in front of him.  Two women and a man, all seated across from him.  The woman in the middle was the captain. Even if she hadn’t introduced herself, he would have known.  He recognized the uniform, the insignia with the bar bisecting three stars. She was a woman of average height.  She had skin tanned to an almost amber color.  Her black hair was cut into a short pixie cut.  Her eyes were wide and brown. The two people flanking her were missing one star; lieutenants.  Haojun had been taught to fear that uniform for as long as he could remember and it was hard to repress that fear now.  He felt sick to his stomach.  But he didn’t cry.  He had been crying for hours and he didn’t think he had any tears left.  

He took a shaky breath. “My father is – maybe _was_ – Li Yongming.  He and my mother were both members of the People’s Coalition for Freedom.  My mother’s been dead for three years.  My father went missing this afternoon.  He said he knew you.  In the letter he wrote me he said to find you.”

As Haojun spoke, Sergeant  Xu slid his father’s note across the table to Captain Jiang who quietly thanked her.  She glanced it over as Haojun continued his speech.  “My father had me follow two Americans who work for Hypatia Technologies.  They’re bringing big weapons to the Coalition.  I don’t know how big.  Really big.” This was where his speech was slightly different from before.  There had been so many questions about the weapons and Haojun had had none of the answers.  “And a lot of them.”

Jiang had a very different response than the police.  But hers was the one Haojun had expected her to have.  She simply nodded. “Your father told us about the drop.  We’ll be meeting them tonight.  You don’t have to worry.”  Sergeant Xu looked shocked by that admission, but she stayed quiet.  

“No!” Haojun stressed, “The Americans know!  They caught me!  The man is crazy and he almost killed me!  They made me tell them things and they know they would be caught!”

Jiang hissed a curse under her breath.  “Is there another place the Coalition might bring them for the exchange?”

“I…I’m not sure,” said Haojun guiltily.  

Another swear.  The other woman looked from her superior officer to the boy.  The man opened his mouth to say something.  Haojun stopped him.

“There’s a base near there!  They won’t bring the big weapons there, I don’t think.” That seemed too dangerous.  “But they might go there afterward!  Big Sister Yuxia wants the Hypatia agents to stay!  Uncle Zhonghao might take them there when they’re done!” he said hopefully.  

“Can you tell us where the base is?” asked Jiang with a renewed energy in her voice.  

“I can show you on a map,” Haojun told her.  He had seen it on dozens of them over his lifetime.  

“Don’t worry, Haojun,” said Jiang kindly, “we’ll get them _all_ for what they’ve done.”

“Good,” said Haojun, and he almost meant it.


	9. Emily Liston & Ray Salk; Traitors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chongli District, Hebei, China

The base wasn’t far, but it was remote; a few buildings in the middle of nowhere, constructed near the peak of the lower mountains.  There was only one road and they came upon the base from the opposite side.  So they had to park a distance away in a concealed clearing and cross precarious non-roads on foot.  

The paths were icy and there was a single frayed rope protecting them from the sheer and increasingly high drop.  Jacobi got a little thrill out of it.  He thought Maxwell did too, but certainly not to the extent he did.  She full-on gut-punched him when he grabbed her shoulder from behind with a shout as she was very carefully traversing one of the rotted wooden planks.  He probably deserved it.  

The base was made up of several single-story buildings in a “C” shape.  On Jacobi’s left, the buildings were set up against the cliff edge.  The far side was in front of a patch of forest.  The closer edge had a few feet of open ground and the winding footpath.  The right had a narrow access road and forest beyond that.  The road lead to the only gate, which was flanked by a pair of inexpertly built guard towers.  On all sides the compound was rimmed in a barbed wire fence.  

One of the unmarked trucks Maxwell had radioed was parked just inside the rough cul-de-sac.  Several people were working on unloading it, voices throwing up clouds of white steam in front of the speakers, their constant footsteps reducing the deep snow to slush.  None of the missiles were here. From what Jacobi could tell, it was mostly grenades and firearms.  The guns weren’t his and he’d only worked on one of the grenades.  There were, however, a few Mania Flamethrowers, a design on which he had worked.  It was a few years old now, but he was still decently proud of it.  Every time he looked at an old model he had a hand in, he found himself correcting his mistakes, anything a few years old showed the errors of time passed.  However, the Mania had fewer flaws than most things its age.

Maxwell was the same way about the things she made. The difference was that Maxwell always went back.  She always reassessed her miscalculations and corrected her mistakes.  She obsessed until anything even _resembling_ an error was erased.  Alana Maxwell demanded perfection from herself and never accepted anything less.  As much as she put up with Jacobi’s crap, she didn’t allow herself the same courtesy.  

“Tāmen shī nège dàibiǎo ma?” A woman’s voice came from one of the buildings as they walked past the truck.  

Jacobi didn’t understand what she said and he glanced at Maxwell for a translation.  “She wants to know who we are,” Maxwell muttered.  

Hu’s quiet voice raised to answer “À, Shī Sàkè hé Lísìdùn.”  Jacobi recognized their fake names.  “Salk and Liston,” said in one breath as “Jacobi and Maxwell” so often were.  

“That her?” Jacobi asked Huang.  

“If by ‘her’ you mean Xie Yuxia, then, yes,” Huang said, looking sideways at Jacobi.  

Jacobi nodded, “Yeah, her.”  Clearly everyone thought Jacobi and Maxwell somehow invested in this.  As if they hadn’t just come here to do their job, as if the only reason they were at this base was to eat food because it was 10pm and they had yet to have dinner and had two hours to kill.  Guo seemed to be the only one who understood that Jacobi and Maxwell could literally not care less about the Coalition, and even she probably couldn’t guess that only minutes before getting out of the car at the rendezvous site they were again arguing over whether the Coalition wanted to stop persecution of Falun Gong practitioners or have free elections.  

Xie stood in the doorway, silhouetted by light.  Maxwell made a noise of relief when she stepped aside to let the party in.  It was far too cold for introductions outside.  

Xie watched them with keen eyes as they stripped off their winter gear.  She was probably about Maxwell’s age, although it might have been that she had a very young-looking face.  She wore a long skirt and a white t-shirt under a camouflage jacket.  Her long black hair was pulled up in a bun under a cap, only a few silky strands peeking out and framing her heart-shaped face.  She was pretty insofar as Jacobi ever noticed these things.  She had a long narrow nose and sharp eyes, intense as a bird of prey’s.  Her complexion was glowing and golden.  She was taller than most of the women there – far taller than Maxwell, at least.   Glancing at her out of the tail of his eye, there was a strange moment in which Jacobi thought she resembled a Han Chinese version of _Liberty Leading the People._ He blinked the image from his head. It was something about her, he decided, some pride and power in her demeanor.  Her eyes had a flame in them… _that_ flame…the flame Guo wanted.  She was one of those people Jacobi never understood. She was one of those people who would kill and die for her Beliefs.  

She had a very business-like handshake and rough hands.  Her nails were extremely short, the nails of someone who chronically bit them.  “Thank you and Hypatia Technologies for helping our cause,” she said in perfect English.

“Just doing our jobs,” Maxwell said, sounding humble but also trying to stress that they really had nothing to do with it, trying to get them out of this.  

“Yeah, don’t mention it,” Jacobi added.  “Ever.”

The smell of food was heavy in the air. At this point, Jacobi would sit through an indoctrination speech if it meant they got to eat.  Luckily, it was evident the conversation could be taken to the table.  Dishes were passed around.  Both he and Maxwell grabbed Snow Beers.  Jacobi stuffed his face and Maxwell happily chatted with various would-be revolutionaries. But when Xie sat across from Jacobi, she got Maxwell’s attention, too.

“Tell me about yourselves,” she said.

“Not much to tell,” Jacobi shrugged.  Not to her anyway.  He still believed what he told Maxwell when she first started: never get too close.  Never give them anything they can use against you.  Never tell them anything you’ll regret.  And never, ever start to care.  

“There has to be something,” she said. “Why else would you be here?  You had to decide to help us.”

“We were assigned, actually,” Maxwell provided.

Jacobi nodded, “Nothing to do with us.”

“Well…” said Xie, clearly trying to regroup. “You’ve already done us a lot of good.  You’ve given us what we need and you’ve found a mole for us.”

“His son was following us,” Maxwell pointed out.  “We really didn’t do much.”

“Please, Dr. Liston, you did,” Xie said, holding up her hand to stop what she must have viewed as Maxwell being self-effacing, “You saved us.  And you can stay as long as you like.”  

Jacobi choked on his beer.  Maxwell patted him on the back.

“That’s fine,” Maxwell said, “Really. We actually have to leave tonight.  And soon.”

Xie looked surprise, “Why?  You’ve come across the world to help us.  You have a chance to do real good with us.Why leave?”

Jacobi’s eyes slid over to Maxwell and he could see she was fighting to keep her surprise off her face.  “Other jobs,” Maxwell managed. “We’re going to the Congo next week.”

“To arm a resistance group there?”

“…Sure,” Jacobi said.  It was, in reality, exactly the opposite. To arm the American organization ensuring the precious Tungsten left the DRC and went into smartphones the miners couldn’t afford.  Goddard would give them weapons to keep resistance to a minimum and an AI to ensure that they were draining the Tungsten reserves at maximum efficiency.  This woman expected _a lot_ of scruples from two people dealing in weaponry on behalf of a shady American company she probably knew didn’t actually exist.

Morals, qualms, beliefs. Those were all very dangerous and very useless things.  Being a human being just wasn’t worth it.  Being a monster paid better, got you more respect, freedom, a real life, and it meant that you weren’t on the front lines when the bullets started flying.  But you couldn’t explain that to people, especially not people who believed in things.  Falun Gong.  Free elections.  Something.  Anything.

There was a shout.  Short and cut off.  The entire group went quiet.  There was a momentary pause.

And then everything was – lights.  Jacobi blinked, momentarily blinded as floodlights were shined into the cafeteria.  There was the sound of a loudspeaker outside. “Chū lái! Bǎ nǐ de shǒu fàng zài tǒu shàng! Rúguǒ nǐmen bù hépíng de tóuxiáng, wǒmen dei yòng wŭlì!”  Jacobi didn’t need Maxwell to translate to know what was going on.  They were caught.  

But Maxwell did translate, “They’re asking the Coalition to come out with their hands on their heads and to surrender peacefully or they’ll use force.”

“They want us to come out peacefully so they can shoot us,” Jacobi mumbled.  He reached back and grabbed a rifle off the wall, checking the clip.

“Most likely,” Maxwell agreed, grabbing a second rifle off the rack.  There was movement all around them, but slow, nervous.  The lights in the cafeteria were turned off.  

“Yǒngyuǎn bù tóuxiáng!” said Xie, ducking below the window.  (“We will never surrender!”) She took her DMR off her back, hands on the grip, ready to fire.  She kept just out of sight below the window, ready to pop up and fire.

“I thought you shot your turncoat,” Jacobi hissed to Xie.  

“We did!” she spat, half turning to face him.  “What happened to JunJun?” she demanded of them.  “You put him somewhere safe, right?”

“You let a twelve-year-old civilian onto your base?!” Jacobi asked in disbelief.  “What the Hell is wrong with you?!”

“He was the son of a friend. Maybe we shouldn’t have trusted him, but he was a friend!” Xie growled.  “But _you_ let the spy go free!”

“Of course we did!” Maxwell said incredulously, “We didn’t think you were stupid enough to give a tween all your secrets!”  

“ _Kāi qiāng!_ ” was shouted outside.  

From the tone Jacobi knew exactly what it was even before Maxwell shouted, “ _Duck!”_

They dodged the incoming spray of gunfire.  Jacobi, Maxwell, and Huang tipped the table over to use for cover.  Guo, Xie, and Wang returned fire from one window.  Zhang, Hu, a woman named Zhao, and another person Jacobi hadn't met barricaded the door.  Hu went down as the second round of gunfire cut through the cafeteria.  Guo shrieked, but Jacobi couldn’t see if Hu had survived or not.  There were people shooting out every window, ducking the incoming fire, then shooting again.  

Haojun.  That damn kid.  This was why you had to be careful.  “This is why Kepler always shoots the hostages,” he grumbled.  

Maxwell didn’t answer beyond cocking her rifle.  But the look on her face told him she still did not agree.  And honestly, Jacobi wasn’t sure he did either.  Maxwell always reminded him he had a soul.  

“Back entrance?” Jacobi asked her.

“Well, obviously,” Maxwell scoffed.  She was already pulling on her coat.  

He turned to Huang, who was nursing a wound where a bullet grazed his upper arm.  “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you!”

“What?!” asked Huang in surprise, his eyes wide.  

“You traitorous bastards!” shouted Guo over the roar of gunfire.  

“You can’t just leave us like this!  We’ll be killed!” Xie said heatedly.

“That isn’t our fault!” Maxwell snapped.

“You should fight with us!” Xie shouted, more angrily than before.

“Nope,” Jacobi answered, shrugging on his bag.  

“We should run, _now_ ,” Maxwell said, grabbing Jacobi by the sleeve.

“Right…bye!” He gave the Coalition a little wave.

Jacobi and Maxwell took off to the back door.  She kicked it open and Jacobi breached first, gun at the ready.  The cafeteria wasn’t yet surrounded, but it was close.  The soldiers had mostly concentrated in the cul-de-sac, covering most of the compound.  There were a few trucks and jeeps rushing down the icy road, more than were strictly necessary.  Jacobi provided covering fire while Maxwell cut through the fence.  Once through, they made a mad dash to the trees.  There were soldiers close behind them.  Maxwell and Jacobi had the advantage of cover and shadows, but they weren’t exactly hidden.  

“What are we going to do?” Maxwell asked, taking aim at one of the incoming pursers.  The man fell from a single shot, pitching backward into the snow, staining it red.

“Oh, come on,” Jacobi scoffed. He quickly unzipped his coat and took a grenade from his bandolier.  “You know the answer to that.” He pulled the pin and felt the weight of the thing for a moment, cooking the grenade perhaps a moment longer than most people would before hurling it into the incoming soldiers.  Snow, blood, and rock spattered outward.  

“A little creativity is all I ask,” Maxwell sighed.

“I’m sorry, which one of us is constantly saving our asses in open combat?” Jacobi asked snidely.

“Um, which one of us is a better shot?” Maxwell pointed out.

“…Shut up,” Jacobi answered.

They weaved through the trees, parallel to both the road and the cliff.  Army trucks peeled past them towards the base.  

“Do you think they got a good look at us?” Maxwell asked.

As if on cue a truck on the road shined its floodlights directly at them.  Men raised their guns.  

“I think they got a good look, yeah,” Jacobi answered.

They were as good as surrounded.  Soldiers ahead of them and to the left, the compound and capture to the right, and the cliff behind them.  

That didn’t stop them.  They each took a direction and fired rapidly into the crowds.  When Jacobi was choosing firearms, he either chose the biggest clip or modified what he had to be bigger. This was unmodified, but he still fired copiously. Maxwell was a better shot with a pistol, but this time she’d taken something far larger.  

“What’s the plan?” Maxwell shouted over the sound of yelling and gunfire.  They dodged away from an incoming tear gas grenade.

“Running like little girls sounds good to me,” Jacobi said.  His hand hovered over his bandolier, carefully choosing a grenade from the quickly dwindling collection.

“Sexist,” Maxwell said, but her voice was slightly choked.  Jacobi paused, had she not gotten out upwind of the tear gas?  He looked over at her.  Maxwell was bent over, her hand over her mouth, struggling to keep her eyes open against the gas.  Jacobi had been lucky enough to dive upwind of it.  Maxwell hadn’t gotten out of its path.

Jacobi hurled his grenade into the group. It exploded outward in a cacophony of noise and scattershot.  He grabbed Maxwell by the wrist and ran for the road, to the nearest car.  Jacobi shot the driver.  Maxwell shoved the corpse out of the way and leapt into the passenger seat.

“How are your eyes?” Jacobi asked, glancing over.  Before Jacobi even closed the door they tore off, bouncing and slamming down the unpaved road.  It was only wide enough for one car; two would scrape.  The two Jeeps closest to the vehicle they stole took off after them, although they weren’t quite so reckless as Jacobi in their speed on the icy dirt roads.

“Fine.  I’m fine.” Maxwell unrolled the window, firing at anyone who dared to come too close.  

“Maxwell,” Jacobi pressed. “Your aim’s off.”

“I _will_ be fine,” Maxwell clarified.  “We’ll dump water into my eyes when we’re safe.”  

“You just have to be macho,” Jacobi sighed.  The road whirled past them, but the lights remained in their rearview mirror.  They were right behind them.  “Take a grenade.”

“Good idea,” Maxwell said.  

“You say that like you’re _surprised_ ,” Jacobi said with mostly mock offense.

She didn’t answer but leaned over and grabbed one off his bandolier.  She unpinned it with her teeth and threw it back.  She didn’t let it cook, which was probably for the best.  She ducked back inside just before the answering hail of bullets and then the flying debris.  In the rearview mirror, Jacobi watched one of the Jeeps tried to stop short but hit the hole just right.  It toppled, rolled over and over.  The one behind skidded into the first with the crunch and implosion of sheet metal.  

Jacobi let out a loud, “Ha!”

“Don’t get too excited yet,” Maxwell pointed.  A third car was still shooting, having stopped short of the crash. Maxwell fired a few more rounds at them, but the soldier riding shotgun used a QBZ-95 to take out their side-view mirror on the passenger side, and nearly Maxwell’s arm with it.  

“Watch it!” Jacobi shouted, regarding the exchange.

“ _You_ watch it!” Maxwell retorted and pointed to the road ahead of them.  Jacobi turned to see that backup was indeed coming for the soldiers.  Coming straight for them.  Bullets sprayed the hood of their car.  The windshield shattered.  Cold air and glass shot inward.  

“Goddammit!” Jacobi yelled.  “Hold on tight!”

“Do it!” Maxwell shouted.  He answered by spinning the wheel as hard as he could, throwing them off the bumpy road into the even bumpier forest.  They crashed through the trees in a chorus of breaking branches and shattering ice.  The Jeeps didn’t leave the road, but they fired after the stolen vehicle.  Maxwell and Jacobi put as much distance as they could between them and the soldiers but eventually they were stopped by the landscape. There was no path through the rocks and extremely thick trees.

“Incendiary grenade,” he instructed Maxwell.  She nodded, understanding exactly what he meant.  

“Here’s hoping we don’t roast ourselves,” she muttered, pulling the pin.  She tossed it into the backseat.  The car exploded just as she and Jacobi rolled forward out the broken windshield, over the hood, and into the shadows.  The car was engulfed in flames almost immediately.  If the police knew anything about cars, they would know they hadn’t caused the blast.  If they didn’t, well, the car did exactly what it did in movies: bullets made it explode.  Either way, they would know it was very unlikely anyone had survived the explosion and the fire that followed it.  Jacobi and Maxwell waited in the shadows made so much darker by the fierce light of the flame.  They crept back carefully, completely out of view.  They stayed hidden, waiting behind trees, watching the soldiers on the road. 

Two kept their guns on the forest.  Another radioed, but they were out of earshot and Jacobi wouldn’t have understood what they were saying even if he could hear.  Eventually, the soldiers filed back in their cars and drove towards the Coalition base.  

Jacobi let out a breath, relief rushing like cool water through him.  He helped Maxwell to her feet. “You feeling okay?”

“Just fine,” Maxwell answered, dusting herself off.

“Let me see your eyes,” he said.

“We don’t have time,” Maxwell answered.  “I’ll be okay.”

“Let me just look!”

“If you look you’re going to try to do something about them and _we don’t have time!_ ” she repeated.  “We can deal with it later.”

He sighed, “You’re impossible!”

“Back at you,” Maxwell assured him.  “Let’s get out of here.”

They trudged to the roadside, remaining in the icy ditch so that they wouldn’t be easily seen from the road.  “How far do you think we are from Chicheng?” Jacobi asked.

“Are you thinking about the extraction?” Maxwell asked.

“Well, yeah.”

“Then the equivalent of roughly a billion miles,” she held up her smartphone to show him the time.  “We missed it fifteen minutes ago.”

“Fantastic,” he grumbled, “Major Kepler is _definitely not_ going to murder us in the most horrific way he can think of.”

“Definitely not,” Maxwell agreed sarcastically, rubbing the headache that was almost certainly setting in.

They walked in dark silence for what felt like hours, sweat cooling and freezing on their skin.  Then the orange glow of human civilization materialized on the horizon, pricking through the trees.  

Jacobi squinted in the direction of the distant town lights. “You see that?”

“Yeah,” Maxwell assured him.  “There’s a village.”

“Good.  I’m not crazy.”

“No, you are, but you’re not hallucinating,” Maxwell said, smirking up at him.  

Jacobi gave her a playful shove, then said,  “I vote we hit that town and call Major Kepler.”  

“And hide out for the night,” Maxwell added.  

“Right,” Jacobi continued, “lick our wounds, and try not to think about just how hard we screwed up. Deal?”

“If you snore, I am rolling you over,” Maxwell said.  

“Fine,” Jacobi conceded.  

“If you keep snoring, I will kill you,” she added.

“Less fine, but I’ll take what I can get at this point.”


	10. Emily Liston & Ray Salk; Wanted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chongli District, Hebei, China

 

The town was quiet, but, then again, it was also past midnight.  Some roads were paved, some were dirt, every house had a garden. There were fields on all sides, barren snowfields now.  The sidewalks had been dug out, thank God, and keeping to the shoveled streets, they were able to leave a minimum of footprints.  It was obvious that two people climbed out of the roadside gully outside of town, but it wasn’t obvious where they went after that.  Maxwell broke them into a warehouse containing raw steel on its way out of the region.  They were both too tired to care that they were sleeping on crates.  Finally, Maxwell let Jacobi check her eyes.  They were red and swollen and tears had frozen to her cheeks.  Jacobi helped her flush her eyes using water from the sink in the warehouse’s bathroom.  They flipped a Yuan coin to decide who would take first watch…and call Kepler.  Jacobi flicked it up, “Call it – flower or number?”

“Number,” Maxwell said.  

Jacobi caught the coin and slapped it onto the back of his hand. “Number it is.”  He took first watch.

Maxwell slept against the wall, curling in on herself like a kitten.  She used her backpack as a pillow – which could by no means be comfortable considering all the gear in there – but Maxwell didn’t seem to mind.    Jacobi waited until he was sure she was asleep.  He didn’t want to keep her up by calling Kepler.  They both needed to be at the top of their game tomorrow.  Once Maxwell’s breathing evened out and he was confident she wouldn’t wake up, he fumbled with his communicator.

He found Kepler’s frequency almost without thinking, mostly by muscle memory.  “Macallan, do you copy?  This is Nitramide.” He used their code names in case they were monitored.  Jacobi spoke quietly to keep from being overheard by either Maxwell or the town beyond the walls.  

Major Kepler clearly did not have those concerns.  “Where the Hell are you?!” he asked, his voice like an icicle dangerously close to falling and impaling Jacobi.

“Well sir…” Jacobi took a deep breath, but Kepler cut him off.  

“No!  No, ‘well sir’!  You missed extraction!  The Chinese army has been mobilized against the Coalition!  And do you know whose names they’re including among their members?  I’ll give you one guess!”

Jacobi swallowed.  “We’re not!” he said quickly.  

“You screwed up, Nitramide!” he said, “You screwed up _bad!”_ Then his tone got slower, increasingly dangerous. “Give me an explanation or you are on your own _._  With luck, the PLA will just shoot you in the back of the head, because what _I_ have planned for you will make you wish you had that luxury.  Explain. _Now!_ ” The last word tightened Jacobi’s chest and made his heart pound.  There was more than the promise of violence in his voice.

“The Coalition had a leak!” Jacobi provided quickly.  “We were able to plug it but not before the damage was done.  We aren’t siding with them, we aren’t helping them.”  He did not mention his mistake of sparing Li Haojun.  And it _was_ a mistake.  Wasn’t it?  He was angry with himself for not shooting the kid, but also glad that he hadn’t.  He couldn’t make himself believe it was absolutely a mistake.  Or if he could, he couldn’t make himself promise that he wouldn’t do it again.  “ _Dammit, Jacobi, stop having a soul,”_ he thought.  

“Why were you at their base?  And your answer had better be good, ‘cause my wall’s got a blank spot and your head’d be an excellent addition. Lord knows you aren’t using it for anything,” Kepler said, and Jacobi could hear his anger rising like alcohol in a thermometer.

Jacobi answered, “After the sale – and, uh, the sale was successful, sir…”

“That is the only reason I am even answering your hail,” Kepler assured him.

“After the sale, Zero-One and I were…kinda hungry?  They said they had a base nearby and we went for food and booze?”

“I wish I could say I was surprised that you abandoned your mission because somebody promised to buy you a drink,” Kepler said dryly.  

Jacobi didn’t try to defend himself.  After all, Kepler had hooked him the same way.  “During the assault we managed to escape.”

“Zero-One is with you, then?”

“Yes, sir.  We’re both alive and well.”

“Alive at least,” Kepler clarified.  

“As far as the Chinese government knows, we’re dead. Car crash. Convenient explosion. You know the drill.”

“Yes, I do, but I don’t think _you_ do,” Kepler said.  “They’ve still got your aliases on the list of Coalition members.  I think they’ve figured out your car was empty.  Your ploy didn’t pan out, so don’t pat yourself on the back yet.  The way things are now?  Oh, Nitramide, they _do not_ end well for you.”   Jacobi could practically hear the Blunt Force Trauma Face on the other end of the line. He swallowed hard.  There was a long pause.  

Jacobi waited in terrified silence.  

A long pause.  Then…

“Here’s what I’m going to do,” Kepler said in a calm voice that only shook slightly with barely concealed rage.  “Extraction will be in Zamyn-Üüd over the Mongolian border.  1100 hours on the 14th.  Miss that bus and you kids have to find another way home from school.  We are not risking anything closer.”

“Yes sir, thank you sir.”

“If the Chinese government finds you first, we will not come to help you. If the army finds you, we will not stop them from executing you. If the police take you in, we will not break you out. We will deny all knowledge of our connection to you and we will erase all proof of your existence. You will die in China, no one will mourn you, and this time next year even I will have forgotten your name. Am I clear?”

“Crystal,” Jacobi said through a dry throat.

“Outstanding,” Kepler said in the coldest voice. “Good luck.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jacobi said again.  It was all he could do.  

Kepler cut the transmission.  Jacobi let out a long breath.  He leaned back against one of the crates and stared up at the ceiling.  He let Kepler’s words wash over him.  There was no one in the world Jacobi respected more than Warren Kepler.  Few people – well, one person – he trusted more than him.  Jacobi wouldn’t admit it to anyone, least of all himself, but Kepler’s approval meant more to him than almost anything else in the world.  It was why he could shrug off the occasional bouts of physical violence.  He’d faced those all his life.  Kepler hit harder than his father ever did, but less often, because Jacobi could make Kepler proud.  Kepler saw the promise and skill in Jacobi that his father refused to.  Kepler’s non-physical punishments were worse.  Kepler had given him everything and he could take it away.  

Worst of all was when Kepler said things like, “by this time next year even I will have forgotten your name.”  Jacobi was Kepler’s right hand, but he knew he could be replaced.  And that was a thought that terrified him: one day Kepler would just throw him out like he never meant anything to him at all.

Time ticked by.  Jacobi gathered his thoughts, calmed his nerves.  Maxwell slept silently.  A dog barked in the distance.  Jacobi finally felt the events of the night catching up to him.  Fatigue threatened to throw him over the edge into sleep.

He couldn’t let that happen. He dug through his bag. He had to occupy himself with something.

They ran out of grenades during the chase.  He could probably MacGyver a couple from the supplies in the warehouse.  It kept him occupied during his watch.  When Maxwell relieved him, he had a fresh, new grenade in the bottom of his bag.

 

***

 

Maxwell woke Jacobi the next morning by shoving what turned out to be a lotus seed bun into his mouth.  He choked and sat up with a start. Maxwell was kneeling next to him eating a white bun dusted with pink.   “I told you I would kill you if you snored too much,” she said, her mouth full.  

He removed the bun from his mouth, taking a bite.  It was sweet and warm and definitely welcome after the long, cold night before.  “These are good.”

Maxwell nodded.  She had two more smuggled in her bandana.  They ate quickly as two roosters crowed in counter time.  He didn’t know how he had managed to sleep through all that noise.  

“Have you heard anything about last night?” Jacobi asked, wiping his hand on his pant leg. 

“Nothing good,” Maxwell said.  “There’s a search for anyone related to the Coalition.  There were definitely people who escaped, but I don’t know who or how many.  Casualties on both sides.  And Ray Salk and Emily Liston are on the wanted list.”   

“ _Great_ ,” Jacobi groaned sarcastically.  

“We need to leave here and quickly,” Maxwell said very seriously.  “Did you talk to the Major?”

Jacobi winced.  

“That bad?” Maxwell asked.  

“That bad,” Jacobi answered.  “He is giving us an extraction though.”  He gave her the cliff-notes version of Kepler’s speech, the version with fewer threats of violence.  

Maxwell hissed through her teeth. “He _is_ mad.”

“‘Mad’ is a monumental understatement,” Jacobi assured her.  He got to his feet and unplugged his arm from the wall.  

“On a scale of ‘Every-Wednesday’ to ‘That-Time-Your-Bomb-Test-Debris-Scratched-His-Shelby-Cobra,’ how mad is he?” Maxwell asked.  Jacobi snapped his prostheses on.  He stretched both arms over his head.  

“Ugh,” Jacobi groaned.  That had been quite the day all around.  It had been the third time in a year his battered Volvo had suffered a near-death experience, its hood crumpled in by a boulder of cement wall.  Kepler’s red Cobra endured a near-scratch of its perfect paint and there had been Hell to pay.  And actual money to pay to get the 1800 ES a new hood. He wound up his arm charger and put it back in his bag.  “I think we’re in ‘That-Time-You-Missed-A-Meeting-Because-You-Couldn’t-Stop-Playing-Chess.’”

“Still pretty bad,” Maxwell said.

“It’s never _good,_ ” Jacobi said, flatly.  He pulled a clean t-shirt over his head. “We poked the bear.”  

“We definitely poked the bear,” Maxwell sighed, shoving her bandana back into her bag.  “With a cattle prod.”

Jacobi rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand.  He spent so much time trying to keep Kepler happy with him.  He knew that Kepler liked him.  He’d shown it in the past.  He let Jacobi in closer than anyone else in the world.  He’d risked his job – and with it, his life – for Jacobi before.  There were times when Jacobi knew that Kepler was proud of him.  Kepler recommended him for the best jobs.  He was the reason Jacobi was in the SI-5 at all.  Kepler had pulled him, almost literally, out of the gutter.

But sometimes…sometimes even _Jacobi_ poked the bear.  It was always unintentional.  Sometimes, it was because of an outside force that put Kepler on edge, and he took it out on the closest person, who just so happened to be, by a cruel twist of fate, Jacobi.  Sometimes, it was because Kepler was hard to read, even to the likes of Jacobi, and Jacobi went a little too far in their camaraderie.  Then, sometimes, it was FUBAR fiascos like this.  

“What time is it?” he yawned.  He grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste from his bag.  The roosters, it seemed, were fighting each other to see who could be the loudest and most annoying.

“Six,” Maxwell answered.

“So, what’s our game plan?” Jacobi asked, crossing to the small warehouse bathroom.  

“We get to Mongolia somehow,” she shrugged, “We can probably hitchhike, right?”

“We’ll need to get away from here before that.  They’ve probably shown our pictures around.  We’ll steal a car.” He quickly scrubbed his toothbrush over his teeth.  

“We can’t take it all the way.  We have to ditch it somewhere.  The owners will go looking for it,” Maxwell pointed out.  

“Where the Hell are we anyway?” Jacobi asked.

“About five hours from the border of Inner Mongolia and seven hours from the border of Shanxi,” Maxwell provided.  

“So we’ll ditch the car at the Inner Mongolian border.”

“Makes sense.  We need new names.”

Jacobi sighed, “Bottom of my bag.”

He heard her rustling around in his pack.  “Aimee Watson, Sioux City, Iowa,” Maxwell said.  When he came out of the bathroom, Maxwell tossed him a passport.  “And you are Carlton Crick from Keene, New Hampshire.”

He nodded, opening it.  The roosters had yet to give up.  They were making this so much worse.  “Do you think anyone would notice if I shot that rooster?” he asked, scrubbing his hand through his hair.

“ _Ooh,_ something making an annoying noise while you’re tired?  I _cannot imagine_ what that must be like!” Maxwell said, more than just a little sarcastically.  

“Buy earplugs!” Jacobi snapped.

“Murdering you would be so much more satisfying,” she assured him.  “I swear you are going to get us caught at some point.”

“Don’t jinx us,” Jacobi groaned.  


	11. Aimee Watson & Carlton Crick; Grad Students

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere near S10, Hebei, China

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a head's up, Jacobi and Maxwell get pretty critical of liberal arts/art students in this chapter. I want to say I mean it firmly tongue-in-cheek. My major in college (I haven't yet been to grad school) was English and World Literatures with a major focus in literary theory. I don't agree with everything they say (I DO agree that white people shouldn't wear dreadlocks and that GMOs are GOOD for example).
> 
> But remember, I mean it to be funny, and I'm super sorry if I offend anyone. I really mean this all in good fun.
> 
> Also don't listen to Maxwell and Jacobi. They are vaguely horrific people. I disagree strongly with their beliefs about ignoring the little guy and that politics are stupid. Look out for people, be involved in politics, and ALWAYS VOTE! 
> 
> I apologize for this intro, I just want to make sure that if people are offended they know I am sorry.

There weren’t many impressive cars to choose from in the village, and no time to properly shop as the town was slowly waking up around them.  Both Maxwell and Jacobi had _feelings_ about cars.  Maxwell was, at present, saving up for a Tesla to replace her modified Jeep Wrangler.  Jacobi was extremely attached to his Volvo 1800 ES.  They were both disappointed they couldn’t find something nicer than a Shanghai Volkswagen or Beijing Hyundai.  They grudgingly settled on an Octavia from the mid-2000s.  Jacobi hot-wired it; Maxwell drove.  

They didn’t see a soul as they left the village and no one along the road looked twice at them.  They avoided the major highway and tried to approximate its path with backroads and electronic maps of varying accuracy.  Obviously, they argued about which way they should go, even with their GPSs agreeing on their location.  Obviously, they disagreed on the best way to get from their Point A to Kepler’s Point B.  Obviously, Maxwell knew she was right, but couldn’t make Jacobi drop his dumb opinion.  She actually thought this might work and their Comedy of Errors would end there.

Unfortunately, it did not.

The next act started when they had to ditch the car after three hours, when the damn thing just decided to die.

It started with a screaming from under the hood.  Jacobi stopped talking mid-sentence, “…the only reason anybody even likes him  is – What the Hell was that?”

“Nothing good,” Maxwell grumbled.  

“Vacuum leak?” Jacobi asked.  

“That’d be more of a whistle,” Maxwell said, “Maybe the fan belt’s worn?  Oh shit…”

“What?” Jacobi asked.  

“The engine’s seizing,” She felt the car freezing up.  It started to buck under them.  

“I shouldn’t be surprised at this point,” Jacobi let his head hit the headrest.

She quickly jerked the wheel and pulled off the road.  They managed to get off road before the engine gave out entirely.  Maxwell and Jacobi exited the car and met at the front bumper.  Maxwell yanked open the hood.  The two of them leaned over the engine together.  She had so many memories of doing just this in so many different places.  The first time Maxwell and Jacobi actually talked, the day they became friends, they were in a similar position. Jacobi’s car wouldn’t start and Maxwell had helped get it running again.

Maxwell quickly realized what was wrong with the Octavia. From Jacobi’s groan, he did too.  Heat seizure of the pistons.  They had fused to the cylinder wall.  The oil must have been too thin or too low.  The proper owner didn’t know or didn’t think to change it.  Jacobi reached out impulsively and grabbed the valve covers.  Despite having donned a pair of gloves on his way to the hood, he let out a curse and his arms quickly recoiled.

“You knew not to do that, right?” Maxwell asked, looking at him out of the corner of her brown eyes.

“Yes,” Jacobi answered.

“But you did it anyway.”

“Yes,” Jacobi said again.  He yanked off his hot glove.  “What do you think?” he asked.  It made sense to defer to her, Jacobi was great with machines, but Maxwell was better.

Maxwell shook her head.  “Maybe I could do _something_ if I had all my tools and new bearings, pistons, connecting rods, crankshaft, gaskets and time to do some serious honing.  But,” she sighed, “it’s basically scrap metal now.”  She slammed down the hood, “if you don’t have a new engine in your pocket, we’re walking.”

Jacobi groaned.  He took his hat from his pocket and bitterly shoved it on his head.  

They went back into the car, grabbed their packs, bundled up, and started walking.  

 

***

 

And kept walking.  

The sun was bright and cold.  Farms peeled slowly by on both sides.  The landscape was as flat today as it had been jagged yesterday.  Miles of cold nothingness.  Maxwell knew the three square inches of her face exposed to the sun were burning.  Jacobi was trudging besides her.  He had long since gone quiet.  They both had.  He had gotten warm enough from walking in the sun that he pulled down the zipper of his jacket part of the way, enough so the top of the Black Sabbath logo on his t-shirt peeked out over it.  He still kept his hat pulled low over his forehead and had a scarf wrapped around his mouth.  Somehow his increasingly perturbed scowl shined through.  

Maxwell knew they looked comedically out of place.  Two foreigners, dirty and sweaty, wandering aimlessly down a country road armed with incredibly suspect-looking backpacks.  She had to stop herself from openly laughing at their predicament. 

Jacobi took his hand from his pocket, consulted his watch and groaned.  “We’ve been walking for _hours_.”  This was the ninth time he had done this.  

“You complaining about it definitely makes it easier.   _Oh wait,_ ” Maxwell checked her smartphone’s GPS to make sure they were still on the right track.  They were, still headed toward the immense border of Inner Mongolia.  They had no other goal other than that, and from there they would figure out how to get to Mongolia.  Until then, they just had to keep going.

“It makes _me_ feel better,” he grumbled.  Another long pause.  “Do you remember who you are now?” he asked.  

“Of course,” Maxwell said automatically.  Then she realized she didn’t.  There was so much else going on in her head now, so many more important things.  Had they left any evidence behind?  Had throwing their old passports out the moving car and off a cliff into a wooded valley below been enough?  Did the police have a good picture of them?  Would Kepler actually come get them in Mongolia?  

“You don’t remember,” Jacobi smirked at her.  “I saw that look.”

“Shut up, give me a second,” Maxwell said, shoving him.  “Just a second.  It’s on the tip of my tongue.  Not Hopper…”

“That was Chengde,” Jacobi reminded her.

“I know this.  It starts with a ‘W’…”

Jacobi began to hum the music from _Jeopardy_.  

“That is not helping!” she assured him.  “Werner…Widnall…Watt…Watson!  Aimee Watson!”

“Ding, ding ding!” Jacobi said.  “Very good!”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, but she was smiling under the collar of her jacket.  Even with all the complaining, she was glad she was stuck wandering with Jacobi.  “I remember _your_ name.”

“Is that so?” he asked.  

“Crick.  Carlton.  Keene,” Maxwell recited.  The alliteration was what did it.  

“Do you remember where _you’re_ from?”

She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again.  “A place,” she said after a second,“that is in the U.S.”

“Uh-huh…that definitely limits it.”

“A stupid state.”

“I think it’s a swing state?” Jacobi said.

“I don’t know those!” Maxwell said, incredulously.  She was so apolitical she wasn’t even sure when Election Day was.  She had long ago decided that if she ever did vote, she would vote for the most liberal person on the ballot.  Not because she agreed with them; God knows she probably wouldn’t, but because it would piss off her family if they knew.  She sometimes considered rigging voting machines just to piss them off, but then, imagining her parents’ rage became less cathartic and more upsetting, and Maxwell pushed the idea out of her head.

“I’m not sure if it is, either,” Jacobi shrugged.  “It comes up a lot around election time?  I hear them talk about it on TV.”  He was as clueless about – and as disinterested in – politics as she was.  Back before GF faked Daniel Jacobi’s death, he had been a registered Democrat, but only to piss off his father. He rarely actually voted and never for the Democratic candidate. Never for the Republican, either.  Because, he explained, he was neither “an idiot” nor “that much of an asshole.”  “Okay…what else do I know about this particular state.  Uh…corn.  Farms.  Flat.  Midwest, but I never lived there.  A capital city with a weird name…Aaaaand….that’s all I got.”

A long pause in which Maxwell considered her clues and tried to remember what was on the passport.  “Iowa!” Maxwell said triumphantly.

“Bingo!  Let’s show her what she’s won!  It is _nothing_!  And it’s definitely not a Brand New Car!”

“That’s a shame, I could really use one,” Maxwell said.  

“Yep,” Jacobi agreed.  Another few moments of cold quiet.  Then Jacobi said, “Aimee and Carlton need backstories.”

“You’re right,” Maxwell agreed.  They both thought for a quiet moment, only hearing the sounds of distant birds and their own loud footsteps in the snow.  

“I got it!” Jacobi said proudly.  “I got it and it’s a good one!   _Grad students!”_

“Grad students?” Maxwell repeated incredulously, insulted to reduce herself to that level.  “I worked damn hard for that ‘Doctor,’ Crick.”

“Shut up and hear me out,” Jacobi said.  “We’re idiot Americans _backpacking_ through the _Great Unknown_ trying to _Find Ourselves_ .”  He beamed mischievously, putting all the heavy emphasis on the appropriate buzzwords.  “We have degrees in the Humanities, will never find work, you used to have terrible white-girl dreadlocks and I take up a seat in Starbucks for freaking years writing my _manuscript_.”  

“Oh my God!”  Maxwell grinned, “I love it!”  It would be fun to work out their frustration on a pair of fictional people.  Maxwell knew exactly the people Jacobi described; who didn’t?  Maxwell didn’t have many of them in her classes, except when the Humanities students were forced to take _real_ classes in math or science.  Maxwell and Jacobi had riffed on those sorts of people before.  Most notoriously, on a mission in New York. It was fun to do it again.  

“Right?!” Jacobi grinned over the top of his scarf.  “Okay, take a second to think of the best-worst grad student.”

“I’ve got mine!” Maxwell answered after a few moments of thought, “I’m studying Philosophy.  I am completely useless.”

“Naturally, you’re studying philosophy,” Jacobi smirked.  They both snickered.  “Lemme guess, you quote goddamn Freud verbatim as if it’s actual _science_.”

“Stop, don’t make me laugh!” Maxwell said. “Shut up, okay, my focus is on the Classics so I love to quote Plato.  I think Zeno’s Paradox is real.  I love nothing more than posing easily solved or unimportant esoteric bullshit to people.   _Oooh!_  The Trolley Problem!  Sorites Paradox!  Molyneux’s Problem! The Swamp Man! I’m against GMOs because I don’t understand how farming works.  I’m a vegan because I don’t understand how human biology work.  I whine about how _problematic_ things are while refusing to acknowledge those same flaws in myself. What about you?”

“I’m taking Freud.”

“Go right ahead, nobody else wants him.”

They both laughed.

“I’m studying… _Literary Theory_ ,” he said the phrase as if it was a curse in and of itself.  “I am so far up my own ass that I have forgotten what the sun looks like.  I psychoanalyze everyone.  I won’t read anything that doesn’t say ‘discourse’ in it like a million times.  Everything I read has to be at least four zillion pages of BS. Nothing is ever funny and I am offended all the time.  I don’t understand why no one wants to hear my crappy composition book poetry.  It doesn’t even rhyme.  I exclusively drink Pabst Blue Ribbon.”  

Again they were both reduced to laughter.

“Speaking of drinking, can I get some of that water?” Jacobi asked when he composed himself.

“Sure, yeah.” She unclipped the canteen from her belt.  She had refilled it in the warehouse. It wasn’t the best water in the world, but it was definitely drinkable. Especially when you were wandering in the middle of nowhere and your only other option was snow. “Do you have the hawthorn rolls?”

“Trade you,” they passed the bag of candy they purchased in Chengde and the canteen of water between them.  

Maxwell carefully unrolled the candy and popped the end of the sticky red hawthorn roll in her mouth.  She slurped it in.  She thought about where they were two days ago.  In a…well, _passable_ hotel, being catered to.  “I miss North Korea,” she sighed.  

“Told you,” Jacobi said.   “Horrible repressive nightmare regimes are great when you’re on the winning team.  Just ignore the Little Guy and you’re golden.  Always pick the winning side.”  The canteen and candy changed hands again.

“That’s the lesson in life isn’t it?” Maxwell posited after a moment.  

“Hm?” Jacobi asked through a mouthful of candy.  

“Pick the winning side.  Ignore the other guy,” Maxwell said.

“Well, yeah, obviously,” Jacobi agreed, clearly having just eaten something very sticky, still clinging to the roof of his mouth.   “Team Monsters.”

“Go Team Monsters!” Maxwell agreed.  “Because caring about the other guy just gets you killed.”

“That’s where these Coalition people are crazy.  Maybe the Falun Gong practitioners need to be protected or whatever–“

“It’s definitely free elections,” Maxwell told him.  

“Maybe the Falun Gong practitioners need to be protected or whatever,” Jacobi repeated a little more loudly, “but what’s the point of being right if you’re dead?”

“My dad would say Heaven.”

“Your dad’s a redneck moron and you know it,” Jacobi told her, popping another roll into his mouth.

Maxwell chuckled, but there was a certain sadness that welled in her.  Sadness and rage.  The feelings that always accompanied her thoughts of what she had once been forced to call “home.”  There was a pause.

“Y’know, he wasn’t right,” Jacobi said, more quietly than before.

“Huh?” Maxwell looked over at him, her thoughts dragged back to the present.  

His expression was more serious than she was expecting.  “He wasn’t right.  Whatever he said to you.  Whatever he said _about_ you.  Whatever he did.  It wasn’t right.”

She smiled and looked straight ahead again, “Thanks.”  

She never told Jacobi much about her family.  He didn’t even know how many siblings she had.  She did talk about Pastor Maxwell to an extent, but never anything that cut her too deeply, never about the things he said about her, the punishments he doled out, the fear he instilled in her as a child, the anger that it grew into as an adult.  But apparently she hinted enough, or Jacobi knew her well enough, to figure something out.  

“I’m just telling the truth,” Jacobi muttered.  The moment passed without another word.  The way they always did.  She wondered if anyone actually knew how to have those moments successfully.  Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard the bag rustling as he ate more of their bare stores of hawthorn rolls.

“Don’t you dare eat all of those, you pig!” Maxwell reached over to grab the bag from him.  Jacobi just raised the bag over her head, using the ten inches he had on her to his advantage.  “That is _cheating!”_ she snapped.

“You say ‘cheating’ like it’s a bad thing!” He said, popping another candy in his mouth.  Still chewing he said, “It’s not my fault my genes are better than yours.”  

“Like the genes that give you giant hair?” Maxwell smirked.

“Why did I ever tell you that?” he sighed.  

“A lapse in judgement that you will never forget,” Maxwell assured him.  “Don’t hog them all!  I’ve only had a couple!”   He smugly passed her a single roll in response.  “You are the absolute _worst.”_

“I try.”

Then came an unexpected sound.  The distant whir of a car.  They both spun around.  There was a truck down the road.  Probably someone who owned one of the nearby farms.  It was a blue truck with a huge wooden trailer attached.  As the truck approached the contents became clearer, the sounds and smells of chickens.  

“Think the hitchhiking thumb is universal?” Jacobi asked, glancing back at Maxwell.  

“I have no idea,” Maxwell admitted.  She looked over at Jacobi, “Should we flip a coin to see which of us risks losing a finger?”

“Oh no, I already lost five of those,” Jacobi said, crossing his arms.  “You can risk one to get us a ride.”

“I gave you new ones,” Maxwell muttered.  Then more loudly she said, “You look up what we’re actually supposed to do to get a ride in China.”

“Wilco,” he responded, pulling his smartphone from his inside pocket.

She stood on the roadside and stuck her thumb out.  The driver looked confused but returned a thumb’s up as if Maxwell was trying to cheer him on.

Jacobi stepped behind her and waved his arm.  The driver slowed and came to a stop.  

They walked up the cab and the driver leaned across to manually unroll his window.  He looked from one to the other with distrust.  “Zhéme le?” (“What’s wrong?”)

“Méi shéme. Wǒ shī Aimee Watson, zhè shī Carl Crick. Wǒmen diū le lù. Wǒmen yào qù Xìngfúxiāng, dànshì wǒmen méi chē. Wǒmen dào Zhōngguó zài pá shān, kànkan fēngjǐng... zhēnshi hěn měi. Dànshì wǒmen deì qù Xìngfúxiāng. Nǐ kéyǐ qǐng bāng wǒmen ge máng, dài wǒmen qù ma?” Maxwell replied, assuming a higher more obnoxious voice. (“Not much. I’m Aimee Watson, this is Carl Crick. We’re lost. We want to go to Xingfuxiang, but we have no car. We came to China to climb mountains, take in scenery... it’s really very beautiful. But we need to go to Xingfuxiang. Could you please help us, and take us [there]?”)

He eyed them carefully for a long moment, then he nodded.  “Hǎo ba.”

Maxwell grinned at Jacobi.  “He’s giving us a ride.”

“Thank God,” Jacobi said letting out a long breath.


	12. Aimee Watson & Carlton Crick; Fugitives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanamsargüi, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, China

A chicken in a nearby cage tried to get its head through the bars and screamed until Maxwell shoved it back in.  

The cages were stacked four or five high, each one overstuffed with live chickens.  The uneven road sent the cages clattering and startled the birds into letting out enraged or terrified clucks.   Every bump kicked up feathers and hay.  It was extremely loud, extremely dirty, and extremely smelly.  Maxwell sat against one of the wooden trailer walls between two columns of chicken cages. Jacobi sat across from her on the other side.  Maxwell pretended to be very occupied with finding something in her bag to avoid Jacobi’s glare.  

“Maxwell –” he began.

“I _did_ get us a ride,” she said before he could go on.

“Maxwell–” he lowered his voice and his frown.

“Technically we are going the right way and much faster than before,” Maxwell pressed.

“ _Maxwell!–”_ More a snap this time.

“Look, Jacobi, you’ve seen enough movies. You know how hitchhiking highjinx work!  You should’ve _known_ this would happen!”

He sighed heavily and leaned his head against the wall of the trailer.

“Really, we’re just lucky he spoke Beijing Mandarin,” Maxwell said.

“Otherwise we’d be even more screwed,” Jacobi agreed.

“Hey!  It’s still one more Chinese dialect than you speak,” she reminded him.  The truck took another sharp turn.  

Jacobi blew a rogue feather out of his face, “My job was the Korean. Please note that we were not detained in North Korea.”

“We haven’t been detained here!” Maxwell pointed out, looking up at him.

“ _Yet._ ”

“Your undying optimism is _so_ comforting,” she said sarcastically.  

The ride in their freezing chicken trailer continued.  Most of the time was occupied with Jacobi making vague threats at chickens and dramatically shivering.  Maxwell tried to coax him into a game of _I Spy_ at one point.  He did not take the suggestion well.  On one of the harsher turns, several cages fell over and broke open.  The chickens inside dramatically flapped and fluttered and clucked.  They pecked around their caged sisters and began exploring.  Jacobi let out a sound of disgust deep in his throat.  The chickens continued to be chickens.  Jacobi continued to be something close to afraid of them.  The same chicken in the cage beside Maxwell kept getting its head stuck and Maxwell kept poking it back in again.  About the sixth time this happened she heaved a sigh and muttered, “It’s like you’re trying to hang yourself.”

“Don’t talk to the dinosaurs, Maxwell,” Jacobi grumbled.  

“It’s just a chicken, Jacobi,” Maxwell pointed out.

“You are way too comfortable with these freaking birds,” Jacobi said, shoving a curious chicken away from him with his heavy black boot.

“We had chickens growing up,” she said offhandedly. “They’re assholes, but they’re generally harmless.”

“They have spikes on their legs,” Jacobi pointed out.

“They also weigh like six pounds,” Maxwell retorted.

“I only trust birds when they’re dead,” Jacobi said, crossing his arms.

“You don’t need to trust chickens. They’re really stupid. Even _you_ are smarter than a chicken.”

A hen crept up on Jacobi’s other side as he was attempting to shove the first away.  It pecked at his hand.  He ripped it out of the chicken’s reach.  “Ow!  Goddammit!” Jacobi hissed, batting the curious hen away.

“Maybe not,” Maxwell smirked.  Through the planks of the trailer, Maxwell saw a town materializing.  White snow fields with distant plateaus turned to small houses barely visible over brick walls, condos wrapped in green construction material dotting the spaces between them.  

“What are your secret chicken wrangling tips, oh great master?” Jacobi asked bitterly.  

“Hm?  I don’t know!” Maxwell shrugged.  Then she snapped her fingers as if she had a revelation, “Oh, I do have one: ‘Don’t be a six-foot toddler.’  Wow, Jacobi, it’s almost like that one was written for you!”  She pulled out her smartphone to check their progress.  

…But what it told her didn’t make sense…

“Don’t come crying to me when –” Jacobi suddenly let out a yelp, “Shit!  Maxwell!  They’re arming themselves!” She glanced over and she saw that same curious hen plucking at the holster concealed under Jacobi’s jacket, its beak picking at the RIA 1911.

“When you’re done being an idiot, I have a question,” Maxwell said.

Jacobi whipped out his gun and was holding it level with the chicken’s head.  “What’s that?”

“You sure you’re good?” Maxwell asked, “I’d hate to interrupt this floor show.”

“Birds are dangerous, okay?!  I don’t know why you refuse to see it.  Crows can use tools!  Parrots have languages!  Cassowaries constantly attack people and one once slit a kid’s throat!  Cock fighting roosters have killed their owners!  Winston Churchill’s parrot?  Still alive, Maxwell!  Still out there!”

“Plotting, to be sure,” Maxwell smirked.  

“And don’t even get me started on...on ducks,” his tone became even more serious on the last word.

Maxwell couldn’t help but let out a snort of laughter.  “I won’t, I promise.”

“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,” Jacobi said through his teeth.

“I’m really, _really_ not,” she assured him.  “Whenever you’re finished, remind me where we told him we were going?”

“Do you think the guy’d freak out if I just shot this bird?” Jacobi asked.

“Yes!  Answer the question, Dirty Harry!” Maxwell pressed.

“This isn’t even close to a Smith & Wesson Model 29 magnum.”

“Of course you can immediately whip that out,” Maxwell rolled her eyes.

“Uh, no shit.  I own one.”

“Answer the damn question!”

“Xingfuxiang!” he butchered it, “Jeez, why?”

“Dammit,” Maxwell muttered.

“What?” Jacobi asked.

“We missed it…he’s taking us somewhere else,” Maxwell glanced in the direction of the cab.  

“For God’s sake!” Jacobi groaned.  “I’m so done with the shenanigans!”

“They aren’t done with us,” Maxwell stumbled to her feet.  

Jacobi followed suit.  They negotiated the bouncing chicken cages to the back of the trailer.  “What’s the biggest caliber you have on you?” he asked, glancing from the padlock securing the door to Maxwell.

“Nine millimeter,” Maxwell answered.  

“Really?!”

“I had to choose between saving my pack and saving the gun back in the army truck!  I saved the thing with all our stuff in it!” she snapped.  “Besides, _you’re_ supposed to be the shoot-y explosions guy!  What have _you_ got?”

“Nine millimeter,” he sighed, “same problem.”

“What do you need a bigger bullet for?”

“Buckshot would actually be best.  But however you cut it, a nine millimeter’s not big enough to take the lock off.”  He pointed to the padlock visible through the planks hanging on the outside.  “Let me see what I’ve got in my Bag of Tricks,” Jacobi said fishing around in the contents of his pack.

“Hurry up!” Maxwell said.  The buildings were tightening, huddling up together, more condos, more construction, blocking out the distant plateaus.  Shops all in a row.  People walking quickly to get out of the cold.  An old man with a whetstone set up shop on a bench beneath an awning, there to sharpen scissors and knives, his wrinkled hands red with cold. The truck slowed to accommodate life in the village center.  

“Gotcha…” Jacobi muttered finding a lump of C4.  He opened the plastic baggie he was keeping it in, not a protective case, just a baggie.  

“You were just keeping that loose in your bag?!” Maxwell demanded.  Jacobi bent down and removed his folding knife from his belt, carefully cutting an even thinner piece free from the whole.  He put the rest in the pocket of his coat.  

“It’s not like I’m carrying Triethylborane!  C4 only blows up if you superheat it!” He was worming the plastic explosive between his fingers into a shape he could wedge into the crease of the door.  

“Like if, say, the guy carrying it also has a love of TNT?”

Jacobi didn’t answer.  He removed a fuse from the front pocket of his bag and shoved it into the C4.  He moved towards the front of the trailer, away from the door, Maxwell beside him.  She clapped her hands over her ears.  The truck came to a stop.  Jacobi slammed his thumb on the detonator without bothering with a countdown.  They couldn’t afford even those three seconds.  They had to move.

Maxwell braced herself against the noise and light.  She knew they were in no physical danger; as usual, Jacobi used just the right amount.  He was terrifyingly good with explosives. But then, people said the same thing about her and computers. The explosion blew outward.  It splintered the door and the first few feet of wooden trailer wall, but everything else was relatively untouched.  The blast was bright enough that she saw it on the inside of her eyelids.  The sound was monumental.  Along with the explosion itself there was the scream and splintering of wood, the shouting of people outside the truck, chickens shrieking and fluttering.  A few were caught in the blast, leaving a storm of feathers and a pleasant smell.

In the immediate wake of the blast, Maxwell and Jacobi ran forward, both pulling their guns from their holsters.  They jumped out onto the street.  There were a half dozen uniformed policemen standing around them.  They all looked shocked as, like any sane human beings, they did not expect a chicken truck to suddenly explode.  

Two were literally rendered dumbstruck.  Three, both women and the oldest-looking male officer, had their weapons drawn.  The man and smaller of the two women had their guns at the ready, the other woman held a truncheon.  The last man was on the ground, burned and lying on the pavement.  He was alive and would almost certainly remain as such, but not in any shape to give them much trouble.  The farmer who had picked them up had ducked away from the blast and remained that way, shielding his head.  Maxwell deftly stepped over the fallen officer and Jacobi prodded his burned arm with the toe of his boot.  The man shouted in pain.  

“Let’s nobody do anything stupid,” Jacobi said.  “Watson, translate.”

“She doesn’t need to,” said the woman holding the gun.  “I speak English and most of us understand it.”

“Great!  Then we can make this real easy!” Jacobi said with a smug grin.  At times like these you could see where Kepler and Jacobi molded together, where the Major offered his influence and Jacobi willingly lapped it up.  

“Yes, we can,” the woman agreed, stepping forward.  She was probably a little older than Maxwell but no more so than Jacobi, certainly.  She had a very pointed face and high red cheeks.  Her brown eyes were sharp and keen.  Her hair, more brown than black, was mostly hidden under her hat.  Her lips were full and red and chapped in the cold.  Her tone was slow and serious even if her voice was high.  “Put your weapons down!”

Maxwell doubted she or any of the other police gathered here had ever been in a situation like this and she was sure that this woman was even less experienced than the others.  When Jacobi and Maxwell were slow to respond the woman snapped, “Sophia Hopper and Albert Nobel!  Emily Liston and Ray Salk!  Aimee Watson and Carl Crick!  Whoever you are!  Put your weapons down and put your hands on your head!  You are under arrest!”  

The oldest looking man was definitely the commanding officer. On his shoulder he had three diamonds and a single bar designating his rank.  He held his gun with a much firmer hand than the woman and kept it level with Jacobi’s heart.  He was probably in his forties, his black hair was graying. He had tired circles under his eyes, and an extremely serious line of a mouth.

Jacobi eyed the crowd.  The surprised men had managed to fumble out their weapons.  Four guns, one truncheon, one officer injured in action.  Four guns, and one pointed directly at his chest, was enough to make even Jacobi a bit ambivalent about running-and-gunning his way out.  Maxwell was sizing up their chances, too.  But she needed time to take in their surroundings.  Time they wouldn’t have if Officer First Time or Commanding Officer decided to shoot them both.  In unison, Maxwell and Jacobi lowered their guns and put them on the pavement.  Slowly they raised their hands to their heads.

“Good,” the officer muttered nervously and Maxwell wasn’t sure if it was to them or to herself.  Maxwell took in their surroundings, trying to figure out their best means of escape. There were shops on both sides of them.  The street wasn’t narrow or crowded enough for them to bolt across or behind cover before getting shot.  But there was a side-street nearby they could duck down, putting a building between them and the guns if they could get that far.  If they took a hostage, using either the hostage’s own weapon or one of their knives, they would be fine.  Officer First Time said something in what must have been Mongolian to Commanding Officer, and he nodded.  She crept forward toward Maxwell and Jacobi, gun at the ready in her right hand.

Officer First Time made a big mistake in trying to take on two Goddard Futuristics agents and she didn’t realize it until it was too late.

Maxwell subtly glanced from the gun to Jacobi.  Jacobi nodded, a movement so small the assembled crowd didn’t even see it.  As the woman went to get her handcuffs from her belt with her left hand Maxwell grabbed her by the right wrist and twisted.  Maxwell turned the woman’s hand so that her gun was pointed under her chin.  Maxwell’s other arm locked around the woman’s waist, pinning her left arm, and making it impossible for her to get away.  At the same moment, Jacobi ducked down and grabbed their handguns.  

 _“Hey! Bù xū dòng!”_ (“ _Alright!!  No one move_ !”) Maxwell shouted to the gathered crowd.  Jacobi was at Maxwell’s side, holding both of their guns pointed at two of the armed policemen.  The woman squirmed and struggled as hard as she could against Maxwell.  But Maxwell was far stronger.  Maxwell spoke slowly and carefully, “Bǎ nǐmen de qiāng _fàng xià l_ á _i!”_ (“Put your guns _down!_ ”) After a half second the crowd obeyed, all but Commanding Officer.  “Nǐ ya! Fàng xià nǐ de qiāng! Nǐ _yào_ tā sǐ ma?!” (“You, too! Or do you want to be the reason she gets shot?!”)   Maxwell said, looking directly at him.  

The man bared his teeth at her, let out a low sound of rage and frustration.  Maxwell held his gaze and pressed the muzzle of the gun deeper into the underside of the hostage’s chin. The bullet would go straight through her pallet into her brain.  

Finally, he said, “bié. Biè hài tā,” (“No.  Don’t hurt her.”) and put his gun on the ground.  

“Wǒmen dèi zǒu! Wǒmen yòng nège lù yào líkāi zhège zhèn!  Wǒmen ānquán de shíhòu, wǒmen bǎ zhège jǐngguān fàng zǒu! Danshì xiànzài tā gēn wǒmen zǒu!” Maxwell continued when he was done.   (“We are _leaving_!  We are going to go down that street and we are going to leave this town!  Once we are safe, we will give you this officer back! Until then we’re keeping her!”)

Jacobi glanced at Maxwell to see if she needed help.  She didn’t meet his gaze.  She could handle this.  He kept her Beretta M9 and his RIA 1911 level with the chests of the closest two officers.  

“Dàjiā dǒng wǒ ma?!” (“Does everyone understand?!”) Maxwell asked.

There were mutters of agreement.  The man on the ground groaned in pain.  A few looked at him, a few looked at the Commanding Officer to see what he would do.  He said, more clearly than the others, “Tīng dǒng le.” (“We understand.”)

“Bǎ nàge rén sòng kàn ge yīshēng!” (“Get your man to a doctor!”) Maxwell said, nodding toward the writhing man on the icy pavement.  

The woman being held shouted something in Mongolian and Maxwell had no idea if she was telling them to listen or trying to be, as Jacobi might say, a hero.  Either way no one moved.  

“Let’s go, Crick,” Maxwell said.  

Jacobi nodded.  

They walked backward away from the group, slowly, carefully, expressions set, serious. Once they rounded the corner and were out of sight they took off running.  


	13. Aimee Watson & Carlton Crick; Presumed Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanamsargüi, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, China

Officer First Time let out a cry as she was dragged.  “Stop!”

“Nope,” Jacobi answered matter-of-factly.  

The other officers probably had to call for backup and get their fallen comrade to the hospital.  So, for a few minutes, they were undisturbed by the police.  Jacobi holstered his gun, but kept Maxwell’s out.  Maxwell held the woman tightly with one hand and her gun, a 9mm revolver, with the other.  They took a twisting path, hoping to keep from being caught.  The few people out on the winter street stopped and watched them.  Some simply stared, some groped for their smartphones, but Jacobi and Maxwell weren’t stopped.  No one is eager to interfere with people carrying guns.  They had to get away.  They had to find a car, a bus, a truck, a horse, _anything_ that could get them away from here.  Something they could grab quickly and easily without leaving time to get caught.

Through backstreets they moved away from downtown into a more industrial area.  Shops fell away.  Roads were narrower.  There were gates and walls around the complexes they passed. Storehouses and various industrial plants dotted here and there with dwindling residences.  Distantly, sirens sang.  As they ran, the sun sank away, winter night washed over them.  

“How do we get out of here?” Maxwell muttered anxiously.

“There’s nothing for miles!” The officer spat as forcefully as she could as she panted. “My colleagues will have called for backup!  The best you two can hope for in a nice warm cell with your Coalition friends!”

“I promise, they aren’t our friends,” Jacobi assured her.

A siren wailed, far closer than either Jacobi or Maxwell expected.  It made them both jump.  The officer laughed triumphantly, breathlessly, clearly being a small town police officer didn’t leave one in the same physical shape as being part of the intelligence division of a downright evil multinational corporation.  The car took a corner and was just down the street from them, gaining quickly.  Jacobi and Maxwell turned down a narrow alley. The ground was made of dirt and ahead of them was brick wall with a dumpster in front of it.  No way out.

“Crap,” Maxwell muttered.  

“Nowhere to go!” the officer growled.

Jacobi swung his bag part-way over his shoulder.  He groped around in it.

“Have some Triethylborane in there?” Maxwell asked only half-jokingly.  

“No, but I do have a grenade,” Jacobi answered.  

“We used your last one to set that car on fire!” Maxwell pointed out.  

“I made it last night when you were asleep,” Jacobi said.  “I had to keep awake somehow.”

“Will it work?” Maxwell asked.  The police car turned down the road behind them.   They had very little time and fewer options.  They had to keep moving so they weren’t run down, but they were quickly approaching the Dumpster and wall.

“Honestly?” Jacobi asked.  She looked over at him and he was grinning stupidly, that smile at the end of the world, where hopelessness and potential collided.  “We’ll see.”

“Great,” Maxwell said bitterly.  But honestly, she believed it would work.  She had faith in Jacobi.  Absolute faith.

Jacobi hurled the thing at the wall ahead of them.

Nothing.

Maxwell dared to glance back.  The car was gaining on them.  The officer laughed breathlessly.  Jacobi leveled Maxwell’s M9 and fired into the makeshift grenade.  Then…

_Boom!_

The alley shook.  The dumpster exploded.  The wall burst.  Brick debris, trash, and pieces of metallic sheeting blew in all directions.  Officer First Time gasped.  Jacobi crowed with accomplishment.  

The cop car swung away from the incoming debris and scraped against one of the brick buildings bordering the alley.  It slammed on its brakes; the hole in the wall wasn’t large enough for the car to fit through.  Maxwell dodged a beer can.  Jacobi got hit with a pomelo peel straight in the chest.  He made a noise of disgust.  He peeled the fruit skin off his t-shirt and tossed it behind him.  They made their way through the hole in the brick wall.

“Thank God that worked!” Maxwell sighed.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Jacobi grinned.  His gamble had paid off and he couldn’t be happier.  

“Well—” Maxwell was cut short.  They weren’t safe.  At all.  They were cornered. They found a car on one side. Officers on the other.  Another car behind the wall.  A reservoir in front of them, a deep brick-lined river with a sheer drop and jet black water below.  It was frozen, but thinly, because there was a current. Maxwell released Officer First Time’s wrist. 

“Watson…” Jacobi glanced over at her.  “What are you—?” She immediately caught Jacobi’s arm and ran toward the reservoir. He came along with her.  He didn’t have a choice.  The edge of the sidewalk was coming up very fast.  Jacobi knew what she was doing and his tone became somewhere between incredulous and horrified, “You can’t be seri—!” Without answering, Maxwell jumped, taking Jacobi with her.  They fell straight down ten feet, their feet shattering the ice. Jacobi screamed from the jump until they hit the water, “—OOOOOUUUSS!”

Once under the surface, Maxwell opened her eyes. She shrugged off her bag, kicked off her heavy boots and coat.  Jacobi was next to her.  He was diving lower, grabbing for his bag.  Maxwell had abandoned hers, but Jacobi, the idiot, wouldn’t. He secured his bag, but he wasn’t coming up.  It surprised her – then Maxwell remembered something from over a year ago…

_“Can you swim?”_

_“Not well…”_

The _idiot!_

She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him up to her level.  Still holding Jacobi, Maxwell swam right below the surface of the water, following the line of ice, trying not to think about how cold it was.  She couldn’t let shock set in.  Maxwell swam with the current, letting it carry them faster and farther.  When she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, Maxwell found a break in the ice, forcing it large enough to fit them both. She pushed Jacobi upward towards a break.  She followed him.  She glanced back, the police were far behind them and, with luck, they didn’t see Jacobi and Maxwell.  They were a substantial distance from where they started.  She could hear white water, and the current was faster.  Maxwell was glad for it.  It meant she had to do less work to get them away.  

Jacobi choked hoarsely.  

“Deep breath,” Maxwell instructed him, feeling hopeful.  But just before she dragged him back under, Jacobi spoke.

“Maxwell,” he croaked.

“We’re okay,” Maxwell promised.

“Waterfall…” he managed.

“What?”  She looked ahead of them and saw the white water.  Underwater everything had been dark and she could only see a few feet ahead of her.  She had been so focused on the police behind them she hadn’t even considered dangers ahead.  But Jacobi was right.

That was what the current was from.  That was why the ice was so thin. And then they were already going over the side.  They fell and hit the water below with a slap.  The cold engulfed them again.  The water pushed them down, down, deeper.  Maxwell’s body scraped against the bottom.  She lost her grip on Jacobi and struggled to grab him again.  She looked up at the dim light shimmering down from the streetlights.  She was afraid that was the last thing they would ever see.  Jacobi was limp next to her, his glasses were gone and his eyes were closed.  She thought she had doomed them.  “ _No,”_ Maxwell thought, “ _Not yet.  We don’t die here.”_ They weren’t done yet.  She wrapped her arms around one of his and pulled.  

With effort, Maxwell pushed off the bottom and forced her way to the surface.  She took a deep breath and Jacobi gagged and gasped for air.  They were just below the waterfall.  The cold water pounded against them, but they weren’t under ice.  The current propelled them toward the cement footings of a bridge.  Maxwell let it.  She hung below the bridge, grabbing hold of the support with one arm and Jacobi with the other.  Both of his arms clung to his bag.  They stayed in the shadows; the water was black and opaque.  She heard the sound of sirens and dove underwater again, taking Jacobi with her.  

Just when she thought her breath would give out, the lights passed.  They must have thought Jacobi and she had drowned or moved on.  They would find her bag and passport in the spring.  Aimee Watson, drowned along with her companion, Carlton Crick.  Neither body would ever be found.

Maxwell broke the surface of the water. She coughed; her head was pounding. She pulled Jacobi up beside her. He choked, wretched, took a deep shaking breath, and pulled himself out of her grip.

“You okay?” She panted.

“Yeah, yeah,” he wheezed.

“Good.” She felt a welling of relief.

Jacobi eyed the canal’s waterfall, “Somehow.”

“Because of me saving us,” Maxwell said.

“I helped,” Jacobi asserted.

“How?” Maxwell demanded.  

“Because otherwise we’d’ve gotten run over by that cop car?” Jacobi croaked.  

“Think you can make it to shore?” she asked him.  

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he said.

She nodded.  She took his bag from him and swam for the edge of the canal.  She was in the shallows and assumed Jacobi was too.  Then she heard a gunshot.  The sound of something splashing down into the water.  Her blood froze, colder than the water she stood in.  Her heart caught.

Real intense fear overtook her.  Had Jacobi been killed?  After everything they’d survived together did it end here?  So randomly, so pointlessly, just a gunshot?   In the end it only took one mistake, and Jacobi wasn’t immune to those.  She was afraid to look, afraid to even move.  She couldn’t lose Jacobi, that would be like the end of the world.

She forced herself to turn around.  She expected to see Jacobi face down in the water, bloody and limp.  But he was standing with his gun smoking in his hand.  A black-and-white duck with a long beak and long feathers on top of its head was slowly sinking in front of Jacobi, disappearing into the dark water.  It was a scaly-sided merganser and it was very dead.   Jacobi stood smirking over the fowl,  muttering, “Take that, you son of a—”  

 _“Really?!”_ Maxwell shouted.  His smile faded when she yelled at him.

“What?” Jacobi hissed in a whisper.

“You’re whispering _now_?!” Maxwell demanded, “After you shot a freaking duck?!  Someone probably heard that!”

“Well, if they didn't hear _me_ , they definitely heard _you_ , Dr. Loudmouth!” Jacobi shot back.

“You have so much black powder on the brain, I don’t know _how_ your head hasn’t just _exploded_!”  She snapped.  Once on shore, she shook the ice from her clothes, squeezed the water off that she could and fought a shiver.

“It’s been fine for thirty-two years, it’ll last a little longer,” Jacobi assured her.  

“I’m pretty sure you just shot an endangered species!” Maxwell added.

“Good!” Jacobi holstered his gun.

“And, more importantly, you know what else?!”  

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Jacobi grumbled.

“You’re down a shot, you ballistics dummy!”  Maxwell’s voice was getting shrill.  

“Worth it,” Jacobi assured her.  “It’ll send a warning to the others.”

“They’re _ducks_ , Jacobi!  They don’t understand threats!  They have brains the size of walnuts!  Yours is supposed to be bigger!”  She took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of her nose, trying to contain her annoyance. “How many clips do you have on you?”

“I’d have to count,” Jacobi answered, shivering.  He took off his wet gloves and dropped them onto the shore.  His organic hand was red from cold, the artificial one was stiff, the movements seemed delayed, and ice was starting to form at the joints.  The artificial arm was never as warm as flesh and being submerged in cold water probably made it worse.  Water it could handle.  To a point.  Cold, too.  Also to a point.  But the two together seemed to be causing some problems.  If it hurt, Jacobi wasn’t complaining.

“Are you saving them for another near-duck experience?” Maxwell asked, “Just in case the others don’t learn their lesson?”

She ignored the fact that they were now in perhaps worse danger than they had been before.  They were going to freeze to death very quickly.  They had to get somewhere warm.  Maybe they could find an unoccupied home and jack up the heat.  Maxwell could feel her hair freezing and see the process on Jacobi, his curls freezing together.  They walked along the bank, looking for a way out of the canal.

“Maybe I am!” Jacobi said, and she could tell he was only partially faking offense. Maxwell had no idea why he was taking this so seriously. Jacobi dropped his jacket on the bank.  He left on his boots.  They came upon an access stairway that they climbed as quickly as their stiffening clothes would allow.

“Jacobi, it was just a duck,” Maxwell assured him.

“I know exactly what it was. And I know what it is now. Super dead.”  Jacobi kept working his artificial fingers, fighting off the ice forming there.  They were on the empty street now, among the storehouses outside of the town proper.  Her socks stuck to the dirt with every step.  

Maxwell was about to give a witty repartee when something caught her eye.  Movement.   Who would be here this late?  Why would they be?  There weren’t any homes around her.  But she had definitely seen a movement between the warehouses. She threw out her arm to stop Jacobi.

“What?” Jacobi asked.  

“Someone’s…I saw something.  Do you still have my gun?”

“Lost it when we hit the water,” he said apologetically.

“But you saved your backpack,” Maxwell shook her head, creeping toward the shadows.  “You know—”

Maxwell didn’t finish that thought.  A rifle butt collided with the side of her face.  Her vision exploded into stars then dimmed.  She heard Jacobi shout her name, but it was cut short.  “Ala—!” She wasn’t sure if it was because she passed out or if he, too, had been hit.  

_Dammit._

_Never get too cocky, Alana._

_It only takes one mistake._


	14. Jasmin Noether and Jay Jouguet; In Deep Shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanamsargüi, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, China

Maxwell woke with a start and a gasp.  Someone was holding her hair back, yanking so hard and so fiercely that Maxwell’s head was forced erect and her neck was exposed.  But that sharp pull hadn’t been what woke her, nor was it the ache emanating from her head where the rifle butt had struck her. It was the hot pain in her face.  It came again.  Burning starting at her cheek.  Sharp, fast, stinging.  Swelling across her skin.  It was a slap.  Someone was slapping her.  

“Leave her alone, asshole!” Jacobi’s voice – sharp, but desperate.

Her eyes snapped open.  She could see fuzzy shapes in the dim.  Her vision was swimming.  She blinked it clear.  There was a man in front of her.  He was small and broad, with a scar on his neck.  After a bleary moment she recognized him.  

“Zhang?”  Maxwell managed.  

She wished she hadn’t.  It shot white-hot pain through her face and she tasted blood.  With her tongue she prodded the source and again regretted it.  Her face was cut open at the lip.  

She glanced over to Jacobi.  He was kneeling on the cement floor beside her.  He had the muzzle of a Justitia assault rifle pressed against the back of his neck, where it joined his skull.  The person holding it to his skin was Guo.  Her expression was cold and angry.  He was still in his wet clothes, as was Maxwell.  There was a goose egg forming at his hairline, indicating that he had met a similar fate to hers.  His hands were held in a zip tie and the ache in her wrists told her the same was true for her.  Another man, sinewy and tall, with whom she spoke at dinner, but whose name she only half-heard – Wen? – stood on Jacobi’s other side.  Glancing up, Maxwell saw Zhao, a muscular woman in her late thirties, holding her by the hair.  Now that Maxwell was conscious she released her and Maxwell slumped forward for a moment.  Zhao pulled a handgun from her belt and Jacobi let out a hoarse, “No!”

But Zhao simply put the gun to the back of Maxwell’s head, much like Guo did to Jacobi but with a smaller caliber.  Maxwell could feel the metal on her skull and the hair stood on the back of her head, but she didn’t shoot.  Clearly the Coalition didn’t take abandonment well.

“Where did you take us?” Maxwell demanded.  

“Shut up, bitch!”  Zhang spat.

_Bitch._

There were few words she hated more than that.  And it was said with such loathing, such malice, such hatred; said as if being a woman was an insult in itself.  Maxwell had always been and would always be a woman in a man’s world.  She was a scientist.  She worked with computers.  She was never quiet.  Never demure.  She never let anyone – man, woman, or otherwise – take from her what she wanted.  Maxwell had been called a bitch often and frequently.  By many different people.  She _never_ liked it.  She _never_ accepted it.

She never would.

Rage bubbled in her.  Anger and fear writhed in her gut.  Maxwell spat in Zhang’s face, a ruby of blood that dripped down his cheek.  He hit her again for that, harder.  Her head snapped back, the gun dug into her skin, another hot sting burned across her face.  

Jacobi shouted, “Bastard!”

The tip of the muzzle of the rifle burrowed deeper into his skin, bending him over, forcing his forehead almost to the ground.   But Guo didn’t shoot either.  Just the threat.  It was clear the Coalition wanted them alive.  

“Is that all you’ve got?” Maxwell heard herself chuckle.  Every word hurt her wounded face.  Even the act of shooting a smug smile did.  He glowered at her but before his hand came down Jacobi got his attention.  

“Quit it with the _Reservoir Dogs_ routine and tell us what the Hell you want before someone loses an ear!” Jacobi shouted. He was shivering from the cold and Maxwell realized she was too.

“What we want?!”  It was Xie’s voice.  

Maxwell turned her head.  Xie Yuxia crossed to them.  She stood over Maxwell and Jacobi both, straight backed, proud, and extremely angry. “You left us to die!  With your weapons!  With all the proof they needed!”

“You already paid!” said Jacobi incredulously.  Maxwell knew that wasn’t the right response even before the heavy _thud_ and Jacobi’s grunt of pain.  She looked over as Wen delivered a second kick across Jacobi’s gut, hard enough to lift him off the ground for a moment.  Jacobi choked, but managed a hoarse, “Ever heard… ‘buyer beware’?”  

“You care about money over lives!?”  demanded Xie.  

“You want a nice lie or the hard truth?” Jacobi asked, his voice winded from being kicked.

“We were told your employer was sensitive to our cause!” Xie snapped.  She stood in front of Jacobi and forced his head up with the tip of her boot.  

“They’re sensitive to a lot of causes,” Jacobi glared up at her, twisting his face away from her shoe. “You could say any cause if the price is right.”

“So it is all about money,” she snarled.  

“Well and power…” Jacobi said.

“And tech,” Maxwell added.

“Yeah, that’s nice too.”

“Zài dǎ yī biàn!” Xie demanded of her men.  

Before Jacobi could ask Maxwell what she said he, found out.  Another hard blow to the gut.  He choked and gagged this time.  Maxwell, sitting upright, got slapped across the face again.  She barely flinched.  Fear and rage.  Her face hardened into a mask of anger.  

“I thought we had friends,” Xie told them.  

“You don’t,” Maxwell assured Xie through her torn lip, “and you aren’t making new ones.  We held up our end of the bargain.  We did everything we were supposed to.  We gave you the tech you paid for.  We showed you how it works.  We don’t owe you a single goddamn thing.  But if you let us go, we won’t hurt you.”

Xie laughed, Zhang snorted.  She knelt and got very close to Maxwell as she spoke, “Doctor, _you_ are tied up and disarmed.  I wouldn’t try making threats, if I were you.”  Maxwell returned her glare with one just as hard and hateful. She was intimidated, but she would never let Xie know it.  She was afraid, but she would hide it.  She would force the feeling away.  Force it away; mold it into something constructive, like anger.  “But,” Xie added, “if all you care about is business and not justice, then you’re right, you don’t owe us anything, you cowards.”

“Damn straight,” Jacobi said to Maxwell’s left.  Another _thud_ and a groan from Jacobi.  “Can you stop doing that?!” he wheezed.

“Where are you trying to go?” Xie asked Maxwell.

“Why do you care?” Maxwell retorted.

“If you’re only interested in making deals that will serve you, then let’s make one,” Xie said.  Then she repeated more slowly, “Where are you trying to go?”

“Zamyn-Üüd,” Maxwell answered bitterly.  

“We will get you two to Zamyn-Üüd. We’ll get you there safe and sound, we’ll keep you from the local police, get you transportation, but you need to do something for us first.”

“You’ll get us over the border,” Maxwell repeated, making sure she understood correctly.

“We will get you there,” Xie nodded.

“You’ll give us somewhere to stay, somewhere warm, somewhere we can sleep without dying of hypothermia or being murdered in our beds.”

“Of course,” Xie agreed. “We’ll bring you to a safe house.”

“You will give us everything we need for this little job of yours _and_ to clean ourselves up.  Everything we need.”

“Yes.”

“You have a deal,” said Maxwell.

“What?!” demanded Jacobi, eyes wide as he stared at Maxwell as if she had lost her mind.  

“We need a first-aid kit, a full toolbox, dry clothes, a hot shower,” Maxwell continued, ignoring her partner, “and a big bowl of uncooked rice.  Make it a tub or a bucket.”

“Uncooked rice?” repeated Xie.  

“You did say you would give me what I asked for,” Maxwell said.  “We don’t have to help you.”  

“You can have a tub of uncooked rice,” Xie said with a _tch_ sound, “and all of those other things.  Now, let’s get you somewhere warm.”  She nodded to her men.  Zhang and Zhao hauled Maxwell to her feet. Wen did the same with Jacobi and Guo took the gun from his neck.  Then Zhang fitted a blindfold over Maxwell’s eyes.  They were pushed along – Maxwell felt the gun in her back – and shoved into a warm car.  A blanket was draped over Maxwell’s shoulders, bringing a bitter and painful smile to her face.  

It felt like hours before they were finally let out.  They were pushed into a bright building.  The blindfolds were removed.  The zip ties were cut.  They stood in the lobby of an apartment building, probably one of the new structures growing like weeds all over China.  Jacobi rubbed his wrists, then his gut.  Maxwell touched her lip and wished she hadn’t.  Her fingers came away covered in blood and the pain was intense.  

They were shown to the place they would be staying: a moderately sized apartment a few floors up.  It opened on a living room without furniture.  Coming off the living room was a bathroom, kitchen, and a bedroom with two cots.  All the things they had requested were already waiting for them in the bedroom.  Jacobi’s pack was there, too, sitting on the floor next to the radiator.  The tub of rice sat between the two cots, a first-aid kit was on one of the pillows, and a toolbox had been placed at the foot of the second bed.  Once they were alone Jacobi picked up the first-aid kit and sat Maxwell down on one of the cots.  He crouched in front of her and took her chin in one hand.

“Your fingers are freezing,” Maxwell whined.

“You’re fine,” Jacobi muttered.  “Besides, it’s your fault we’re in this mess.”

“I think I cut us a pretty kickass deal,” Maxwell said.  Her voice was slightly thick and distorted from the wound on her lip.

“Stop squirming,” Jacobi answered in a low tone, “your lip’s still bleeding really bad.”

“I am aware of that, yes,” Maxwell said dryly.  Her tone was the only thing that was dry.  “I must have cut it open when I hit the ground.”  

“No idea, they hit me right after they hit you.”  Jacobi cracked open the first aid kit. “I'm sewing you up.”

“Are you still mad?”

“I’m a little salty that you signed us up for God knows what, yeah, but I’ll probably be able to keep myself from stabbing you in the face with a needle, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said, fishing around in the contents.  He took out an alcohol swab and tore it open.

“How’s your arm?” Maxwell asked.

“Which?” Jacobi asked, cleaning the wound and wiping the waterfall of blood from her face.  She hissed and tried to turn her head, but Jacobi held her chin.  “Sorry,” he added gently.

“Which do you think?” Maxwell asked.

He tossed the bloodied pad into the trash.  “It’s working.  Some problems, but it’s working.  It’s doing better now that it’s out of the cold.”

“You got it wet,” Maxwell said.  Jacobi opened one of the sealed needles and took it out.  

“ _You_ got it wet.   _I_ had nothing to do with jumping into that canal,” Jacobi corrected her, finding the polyglycolide thread.  “Besides, you said this one could get wet.”

“I also said not to submerge it for long periods of time.”

“I’ll think about that next time you drag me over a 50-foot cliff,” he said, carefully threading the needle.

“It was 12 at most,” Maxwell said.  “Don’t exaggerate.”

“C’mon, stop talking,” he said, more seriously than usual.  He looked very closely at her face.  Maxwell cooperated.  Carefully, very carefully, he brought the needle through her skin. It wasn’t the first time she had needed stitches, but they were never pleasant, especially without anesthetic.  She winced but kept her head straight.  “I’m sorry,” Jacobi muttered again. Maxwell didn’t answer.  

It was only a few stitches and he tied them off deftly, even if his mechanical joints were clicking in protest. She raised her hand to touch the stitches, then lowered it again, thinking better of it. “Thank you,” she said.

“Any time,” he answered, tossing the needle into the trash.  He cleaned her blood from his hands with another alcohol pad.

“I’m going to return the favor.  Take off your arm,” Maxwell said, “I’m going to fix it.”

“You got it, boss,” Jacobi said sarcastically, but he popped off the mechanical arm and passed it over to her.  She took it in two hands. “And I’m going to see if I can still stop myself from getting hypothermia.  I’ll tell you how the shower is.” He turned and disappeared into the bathroom.

“Don’t use all the hot water!” Maxwell called after him.  She tongued the sewn wound from where it started on her lip to the end just below on her chin.  It sent a wave of pain through her.  The area was sore and she could still feel the skin being pulled.  It may have hurt, but no more than the open wound did, and she was no longer bleeding.  She put the arm on the bed beside her and opened the toolbox.  With a multi-directional series of moves, she cracked open and peeled back the arm’s exoskin.  “There must be an easier way of doing this…” she muttered to herself.  She spent the next few minutes warming the arm and removing ice from the joints.  She dropped both arm and exoskin into the rice to dry out.  He was very lucky nothing had short-circuited.

She rose and crossed to the mirror.  Jacobi’s stitches were neat and small, clean and careful.  She was quietly touched at the tenderness of his handiwork.  She smiled, which sent a wave of pain through her lip that she ignored.  

There was a knock on the door and Maxwell opened it to see Wen again.  This time he thrust a stack of clothing at her.  Two big t-shirts and two pairs of shorts warm from the laundry.  “Nǎ zhè bà,” (“take them”) he said simply holding them out to her.

Maxwell snatched them from him and slammed the door closed.  

Maxwell sighed and took off her wet clothes.  She draped them over the radiator, pulled on one of the t-shirts, a pair of shorts, and wrapped herself entirely in a blanket.  She dropped Jacobi’s clothes on his bed.  She was exhausted, but she knew she needed to get under hot water.  She went through Jacobi’s bag and emptied the contents onto the floor.  There were some items that were definitely ruined and Maxwell threw those away before Jacobi could come out and protest.  The things that could dry she laid out in front of the radiator.  She took his lighter apart, threw out the wick, and laid the other parts out on the windowsill.  She grabbed two more passports from his bag: Jasmin Noether and Jay Jouguet.  She left Jacobi’s on his pillow.  

Jacobi emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam with a towel wrapped around his waist.  He had a lot of scars, but there were only a few that she noticed anymore.  Those were the scars from the Colombia mission gone wrong.  He had large parallel furrows across his chest courtesy of Bryan Teel’s guard tiger.  The 700-pound animal had thrown Jacobi to the ground, raking its immense claws through his flesh before nearly severing his arm with a single bite of its impossibly powerful jaws. The Goddard Futuristics doctors had done an excellent job repairing the wound – the scars were nearly invisible – but Maxwell always knew the scars were there.  In her mind’s eye she could see the four pale upraised lines and she knew she would never stop seeing them.  They were as visible to her as the right arm that ended at the scarred bicep.  Both were permanent reminders of the time she nearly lost Jacobi.  

“You okay?” Jacobi asked.

“Fine,” she said looking up into his face. “They brought pajamas for us.”

“How nice,” Jacobi said sarcastically.

“How’s the shower?”

“Water pressure sucks,” he said as he crossed to the radiator and laid out his shirt, pants, socks, and boxers.  “But it’s hot and there’s a dry towel.”

“Good enough,” Maxwell agreed.  

She crossed to the bathroom.  He was right about the pressure, but the heat held and that was all she needed. By the time she emerged he was asleep and snoring loudly in the closer cot. She sighed but shrugged it off.

At least it wasn’t the cheeses.

 


	15. Jasmin Noether & Jay Jouguet; Mercenaries & Coffee Snobs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delberelt, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, China

 

The next morning, Jacobi woke first.  He was groggily coming to when there was a knock on the door.  Maxwell was curled up on her cot under her blankets, still sound asleep.  He groaned and rolled out of bed.  He crossed to the radiator and poked his clothes – still wet.  He sighed and answered the door in his borrowed boxers.  He didn’t bother trying to find the t-shirt he had been given and pulled off the night before when Maxwell decided to crank up the space heater.  It was early; he wasn’t going to be anything _close_ to cheery or accommodating.  

He didn’t recognize the man on the other side of the door.  He was holding a folded pile of clothing.  He looked a little surprised at Jacobi’s state.  The man’s eyes moved quickly over Jacobi, taking in the bed head, the circles under the eyes, no shirt, the intense scowl.  Then they went on to the scars.  

Jacobi lived a dangerous life and had dozens of scars to prove it.  Some of the scars were from missions since becoming part of the SI-5 and had nothing to do with his ballistics work: a round bullet wound over a rib, a brief keloid range on the left side of his stomach from a knife, the pale lines from the tiger attack.  Many were from a lifetime of playing with fire and Things that Broke Other Things.  They were by-and-large older than the SI-5 scars, but they were still there: burns and a diagonal indent from debris from an incident as a teen.  The largest he earned when he was in grad school at MIT.  He was 22 and an experiment went wrong, rendering his right side and chest – from his shoulder to the end of his ribs – a map of burn scars almost a decade before he lost his arm.  

He had a trio of tattoos as well, images of molecules to which he was incredibly partial.  The first was on his left forearm, TNT, he'd gotten it as a teenager, mostly to spite his father who, being both military and Jewish frowned heavily on tattoos.  The second was nitroglycerin over his right shoulder, which he got in grad school shortly before graduation.  The final one was the newest, RDX on the left side of his chest, that one he got with Maxwell nearly two years ago now.  Maxwell had gotten a tattoo as well, the word "future" written out in binary on her forearm.  

But none of his scars or tattoos were so obvious as his missing arm, and without the prosthesis on it wasn’t surprising the man’s gaze darted there.  His eyes traced from shoulder to bicep where the flesh ended just above the elbow.  His shoulder had a continent of that MIT burn map.  His bicep had several scarred lines from where Maxwell implanted the bioelectric sensors that linked Jacobi’s natural nervous system to that of his mechanical arm.  It ended in a web of keloidal scar tissue around a titanium peg that acted as link between flesh and silicon, carbon fiber, plastic, and metal.  Most of these, beside a few inches of bicep scar, were covered by his robotic limb when it was attached, and the state of the remaining arm, especially when uncovered, often surprised people.  Jacobi hated it.  

And he sure as Hell was not in the mood for it this morning.   

Jacobi said nothing, glared, grabbed the clothes from the man, and slammed the door with a kick.  He dropped Maxwell’s clothes at the foot of her bed, holding his under the stump of his right arm as he did so.  Then he crossed back to his cot and looked over what he had been given.  It was a pair of jeans, a pair of boxer briefs, and a black t-shirt with green, orange, and yellow stars that read, enigmatically, _57 Rock_.  They smelled heavily of detergent.  Jacobi wasn’t sure whose clothes he would be wearing (or whose he was presently wearing), but he recalled that two days earlier, Guo wore the shirt Maxwell had been given.  He recognized the little tear below the neck where a pin must have snagged.

He crossed to the bathroom to shower off sleep as best he could.  He brushed his teeth, tamed his hair, and dressed one-armed. At this point, he had had a lot of practice doing things like this.  When he came back into the bedroom, he crossed to the bucket of rice and tentatively took his arm out.  He shook off some stubborn kernels and awkwardly reattached the exoskin.  He would lobby for it to be made an easier process next time so he could do it himself without difficulty.  Maxwell was always working on new designs, always looking for perfection.  Her sketches were on the back of many papers she was given, regardless of their importance.

He snapped the arm back on and tested the joints.  The stiffness and numbness he’d suffered yesterday were gone and he smiled to himself, acknowledging the genius of Maxwell’s dry-rice cure. He yawned, stretched, cracked his back, then got up and went down to breakfast.  

When Jacobi hauled himself downstairs to the room they used as a dining hall, he saw many familiar faces.  Some were missing, some were new, the population having shifted somewhat. He was surprised Huang wasn’t there since, as far as Jacobi understood it, he was Xie’s second in command.  Something must have happened to him, prison – or worse.

Guo was in there, looking far more human than the last time he saw her. The bed-head helped, and her expression was softened with her eyes puffy from sleep.  She stared into her plate of yóutiáo before actually picking up her chopsticks to eat them.  Yóutiáo were a kind of oily fried dough that Maxwell and Jacobi had had in Chengde.  Jacobi was always a sucker for all things fried, and his stomach growled a reminder that he hadn’t eaten since those now-ruined hawthorn rolls the afternoon before. Guo was the only one among the gathered crowd Jacobi knew for sure spoke fluent English (Xie was absent), so he decided he would risk talking to her once he got his food.  

He walked through the room to the far end where a table had been set with a small buffet.  There were cups, plates, and a pot of coffee on a burner next to cartons of cow and soy milk.  Beside these were a platter of yóutiáo, a large bowl of zhōu – a rice porridge – with pork and various vegetables in it, and a plate of salted duck eggs.  Jacobi grabbed a tray, filled two small bowls with zhōu, snagged some yóutiáo with a pair of chopsticks, and palmed a few eggs off the plate.  He took enough for Maxwell and himself to share, whenever she decided to come down.  He would wait on getting coffee for her, in case she took a long time to haul her ass out of bed.

The mug he grabbed for his own coffee was still warm from the dishwasher.  Jacobi smiled again.  Whatever Maxwell did to his arm yesterday when he was in the shower had done the trick.  The terrifying numbness was completely gone. After the extended bath in the canal, his arm had lost some of its feeling. _A lot_ of its feeling.  It had scared him more than the stiffness.  He still felt the objects he touched, but, for example, when he held Maxwell’s chin, her skin temperature felt no different than the air outside.  He could still feel the shape of her face, but it was as if it radiated no heat.    

This morning his sense of touch was back to normal. He was reassured of that fact when he burned himself on the coffee pot.  The exoskin and the arm itself were, of course, unharmed, but it had sent a shockwave of pain up into his brain the way it was supposed to.  He had yet to find the melting point of the compound the exoskin was made of, but Maxwell had too efficiently hooked up his pain receptors for him to risk testing it.  

“Goddammit!” was the first thing he said aloud that morning.  He sucked on the burned finger until the heat dissipated (far faster than it would have in organic tissue.)  His exoskin was unmarred and the heat left long before the pain did.  He could say one thing, losing two-thirds of his right arm had definitely helped save on polysporin and nonstick dressings.  

Tray in hand, he went back across the dining room and pointedly sat across from Guo.  She glared up at him, but didn’t move.  Jacobi noticed a spark had dulled in her eye, a fire struggling to stay lit.  Maybe the shootout did it.   _“Welcome to the real world, kiddo,”_ Jacobi thought. _“Enjoy your stay.”_

“Good morning,” he said, his voice oozing with sarcasm.

She didn’t answer, but pointedly dunked her yóutiáo into her soy milk and took a bite.

“Fine,” Jacobi said, “don’t talk to me.  I’ll just have a conversation with myself. ‘Hi, Jouguet, how are you feeling after last night’s beating?’ ‘Oh, pretty good. You know how it is.  I got a fat lump on my head from the pistol whipping and the ol’ kidneys are good and bruised from the kicking, but I’ll survive.  Maybe I’ve got a concussion, but I slept _real_ well.  Then I came down this morning and I thought, I wonder how Guo is doing after she held an assault rifle to my head last night.   _That_ was a super fun reunion. Glad these guys are enjoying the tech we brought them.  Haven’t seen Huang since I got here, though.  I wonder where he—?’”

That did it.  Guo looked up at him.  “Huang Zhonghao is dead,” she said in a shaking voice.  She furiously blinked back tears.  Jacobi realized her eyes weren’t swollen with fatigue, but, instead, from crying.

None of it phased Jacobi.  Why would it?  After all, he wasn’t even surprised.  He figured the guy was either in prison or dead, and the former could easily lead to the latter.  He was very used to death in his line of work.  Jacobi didn’t think any death barring Kepler’s, Maxwell’s, and, obviously, his own, would make him so much as blink.  Who the Hell was Huang to him? 

People died. That was how the world worked.  You stayed alive as long as you could, then you died.  You didn’t know when.  You didn’t know how.  You ran as long and as hard as you could until you reached the finish line.  Then you realized the finish line was made of razor wire.   _Slice.  Thud._  Super dead.  The end.  He knew for a fact that no one but Maxwell or Kepler would care if he died.  When GF faked his death back in 2011, his parents hadn’t even gone to ask about a body.   _That_ didn’t exactly make a guy want to care about anybody else.  And Jacobi excelled at not caring about things.  

“Makes sense,” he said, and took a sip of the coffee.  It was terrible, far too bitter. 

“He was my friend!” Guo snapped.  

“Everybody dies,” Jacobi shrugged.  

“He deserved better than that!”

“Everybody does, but shit happens.”

“ _This_ shouldn’t have happened!” Her voice was tight and shrill.

“Whatever happened to dying for your Cause?” Jacobi asked snidely.

Guo did not respond.  Her expression tightened. For a moment Jacobi thought she would scream.  Then tears welled in her eyes and, without saying a word, she stormed away.  Oh well, now Maxwell had a place to sit.

 

***

 

When Maxwell came downstairs, Jacobi was staring into his cup with quiet disdain as if the coffee had deeply wronged him. It felt very much like it had.

Maxwell looked slightly less tired than he did, more put together.  Her lip was swollen and red around the stitches, but not unusually so.  Jacobi thought he had done a good job of it given the circumstances.  And they had both managed to avoid hypothermia.

“Morning,” Jacobi said.

“Morning,” Maxwell yawned.  “How’s the coffee?”

“Terrible,” Jacobi answered.  “You want some?”

“When you say it like that, how can I refuse?” Maxwell took Guo’s abandoned seat across from him.

“Sit tight and I’ll get you some of the worst coffee you’ve ever had,” he said.  

“Second-worst,” she called after him.  “It’ll be hard to beat Bulgaria!”  When he returned, he pushed the fresh cup (with milk since there was no half-and-half for her) and a pair of chopsticks toward her with his robotic arm.  She watched him do so.  “How’s your arm?” she asked, taking a yóutiáo off the plate and munching it.  She winced, Jacobi assumed from the pain in her lip.

He examined his hand.  “I’m fine. You fixed it,” he said.

“Good,” she considered her cup, picked it up, seemed to think better of it and put it back down.

“How’s your lip?” he asked.

“I’m fine.  You fixed it,” she echoed, then winced again.

Jacobi’s expression softened.  “Does it hurt that bad?”

“No, don’t worry, Jouguet.  It’s just tender.  I’m okay,” she assured him.  

“Are you being macho again, or do you mean it?” he asked, watching her peel an egg open with her nails.  She considered the now unshelled portion, then pulled the white into pieces small enough to fit on one side of her mouth.

“Jay,” she said, using his fake name the same way she would say “Daniel,” making it carry the same weight, “I _am_ fine. It’s just a cut.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. He did, but watching Maxwell get hit yesterday, seeing a gun pointed at her head, hearing that guy call her a bitch, listening to her speak thickly through that open lip…it had been frightening.  Sickening.  He should have been able to do something to help her, but he hadn’t.  She was his best friend and he couldn’t help her.  

He was grateful beyond words that Maxwell managed to keep them from getting shot by enraged revolutionaries, but he was sorry he couldn’t do it before Maxwell suffered; before Maxwell reached the point of real fear.  

And she had been very afraid.  

The Coalition might not have seen it, but he could.  She hid it behind anger and spite, acted tough to try to convince everyone, including herself, that she wasn’t scared.  But she was, he knew she was, and Jacobi hadn’t been able to help her.  He had been afraid, too.  Terrified.  Not just because he was being beaten while he had a gun pointed at his spine, but because seeing Maxwell with a gun on her frightened him more than he would ever admit.  It scared him as much as, maybe even more, than having an assault rifle aimed at his own neck.  Last night had been one of the most harrowing experiences in his life.   _And he hadn’t been able to do anything to help her._

He had been completely powerless.  

He would never let it happen again.

“Don’t get sentimental on me, Jouguet,” Maxwell smiled at him.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Noether,” Jacobi smirked over his cup.

Maxwell braced herself and took a sip.  She choked and put the cup down. “That – is really awful.”

“Told you,” Jacobi said.

Xie emerged from the crowd sat at the head of their table, between the two of them. Jacobi glared at his plate.

“Xie,” Maxwell said icily.  All formality had dropped from her voice.  They were working together now and they were playing on the same level.  This wasn’t a polite corporate deal through Goddard Futuristics.  This was Maxwell and Jacobi; two very angry, very bruised special operatives.  Niceties were not in their wheelhouse.

“How are you feeling?” Xie asked, as if she wasn’t the reason they had been hurt.

“Fine,” said Maxwell, her tone diving even lower, colder than the water they had been submerged in. “Jouguet fixed me up.”  She nodded towards Jacobi.  Jacobi turned his glare on Xie.  

“You can’t blame us!”  Xie said incredulously.

“We absolutely can,” Jacobi assured her.  “In fact, I’m blaming you right now!”

“You left us to die!  We weren’t taking chances! ”  Xie reminded them.

“And we told you,” snapped Maxwell over the tail-end of Xie’s sentence, “it is not our job to fight for you!”

 _“But you could have!”_ Xie shouted, slamming the table with both hands.  “You could have stepped outside of your _job!_  You could have helped us because you know what we’re fighting for and you know what we are fighting _against_!  Because we were in danger!  Because we were up against the wall!  Because you are human beings!”  

“We’re not,” Jacobi corrected her.

“You’re not?” Xie blinked, her train of thought clearly derailed.  

“Right, we’re not human beings,” Jacobi said.  He took a sip of coffee. “Your coffee sucks, by the way.”

“What the Hell are you talking about?” asked Xie, her eyes searching Jacobi’s stoic face.

“It’s basically battery acid pretending to be coffee and it’s not getting an Oscar for this performance,” Jacobi said.

“That isn’t what I meant!” Xie growled.  She leaned closer to him, looking dangerous.  

“Yeah,” he smirked, not breaking eye contact, “I know.”

“What are you if not human beings?”

“Monsters,” Maxwell supplied simply and Xie’s head snapped to her in surprise.

Maxwell was not smirking.  She looked very serious.  Terrifyingly so.  It was helped by the painful railroad of stitches on her lower lip and chin.  Her brown eyes were flinty.  Her voice was cold and unwavering.

“Monsters?” Xie asked.  Then said “Guàiwù?”

Jacobi assumed must have meant “monsters” since Maxwell nodded and said “À, shì. Guàiwù.” That first bit meant “yes,” Jacobi had at least picked up that much at least.

“What do you mean you’re monsters?” asked a still-shocked Xie.

“We don’t care.  We do our jobs without complaint.  We make people dangerous.  We give them what they need to outsmart, out-gun, and otherwise wipe out their enemies, whatever that may be.   _Who_ ever they may be.  It’s not just underdogs.  It’s anyone.  Our company armed both sides in Sudan, _f_ _our_ sides in Syria.  We kill, directly or indirectly.  We _kill_ and we don’t even flinch.  Our mission to the Congo is to arm the American military contractor protecting foreign tungsten interests.  Making sure more money and resources leave the DCR than ever stay in it.  Next week we will be helping _bleed a country to death_.  Slowly.  Painfully.  Absolutely.  We don’t have decency,” Maxwell said, “so stop trying to appeal to it.”

Xie looked disgusted.  She glanced from one to the other, her eyes hot with anger.  

“We really don’t give a crap,” Jacobi assured Xie.  

She spat in his cup in response.  

“That really only makes this slightly grosser,” Jacobi assured her before pouring it onto the floor.

Xie hit him, hard and closed-fisted across the left side of his face.  Jacobi caught her wrist, sinewy and strong, when she pulled back.  Suddenly a dozen guns were pointed at him.

“Jay,” Maxwell said slowly, raising her hands to show she surrendered, “let her go.”

Jacobi released Xie and the guns went away as quickly as they’d come out.  His cheek stung where she had made contact and he rubbed it bitterly.  But it was just another bump to add to the collection, and it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the pain above his kidneys.  “You’re lucky we do our jobs. It’s the only reason we helped your sorry asses in the first place,” Jacobi said coldly.

“You are _heartless_ ,” Xie said.

“ _Aw_ , now you’ve hurt my feelings,” said Jacobi sarcastically. Then more seriously, “Get over it! Besides, you’re not shedding any tears over Huang or Hu or any of the other guys you lost this week!”

“They died for the Cause,” Xie said through her teeth.  “They were friends of mine, but they knew what they were doing!”

Jacobi glanced at Maxwell.  She was frowning.  “Some friends,” Maxwell scoffed.

“And you’re better?!” Xie demanded heatedly, swinging around to face Maxwell.  Maxwell did not stir.  “You swap causes for cash!  You don’t care about anyone or anything beside yourselves!  If someone gave you enough money, you would shoot your partner, wouldn’t you?”  

“No,” said Jacobi and Maxwell at once, automatically.  Another GF agent?  Maybe.  If it was to save his life and not fatten his wallet, he would cap another agent. It would depend on the situation and the agent.  If it was someone else.  

Never _Maxwell._

_Never._

He would kill anyone in the world _for_ her, but he would never hurt her.  

And the way she was looking at him, he was pretty sure she was thinking the same thing.

“You–”  Xie began again looking from one of them to the other, clearly surprised by their response, but Maxwell cut her off, losing her patience.

“I think we’ve already made our stance _abundantly_ clear.  We don’t _care._  So please just tell us about whatever menial task you want us to do because nothing you have to say is going to interest us in the least and the sooner I stop hearing your voice, the better,” Maxwell said.

“Fine,” Xie growled, glaring something more than daggers at Maxwell – glaring bullets at her.

There was a records office in the League Seat that contained documents that contained information on the Coalition’s  _blah blah blah_ , Jacobi didn’t care. It was protected by some kind of advanced security system.  The Coalition had lost Huang who was their main tech guy and their runner up, a guy named Pan, was currently stewing in a cell in Beijing.  To Xie’s credit, the loss of Huang did seem to affect her; she twisted her hands on the table whenever she mentioned his name.

“Without Huang or Pan, we were going to send for Pan’s student, Farah Bextiyar.  But she’s all the way in Xinjiang and it would take some time for her to join us.  Then we found you again, Liston,” she nodded towards Maxwell.  “And we know what you can do.  When we first made contact with Hypatia Technologies, we were told a bit about the agents they were sending.  One was a woman named Sophia and she was their finest hacker.  The other was a man named Albert and he was their best weaponry expert.  That turned out to be you two, Liston and Salk.  Or whoever you are now.”

“Jasmin Noether and Jay Jouguet,” said Jacobi, jabbing bitterly at the half of a duck egg he had left on his plate, forcing a chopstick into the white cavity where the yolk had been before Jacobi ate it.

“We’d thought we’d lost you, of course.  But then you turned up in Sanamsargüi.  We were very lucky,” continued Xie without acknowledging Jacobi.

“Yes,” Maxwell said darkly, “lucky you.”

“How the Hell did you find us?” Jacobi asked with just as much darkness.

“One of the police in Sanamsargüi is secretly a friend of the Coalition.  They heard that you were found by a farmer and that he was bringing you in to be arrested.  They called us, assuming we would be thrilled to know you were alive and well.  After all, the Coalition members arrested in Hebei named you as co-conspirators, corroborated, to be sure, by Li Haojun.”

“If you ever see them again, thank them for that,” Jacobi said sarcastically.

Xie smiled coldly at him.  “They were mistaken in thinking you cared, but I’m glad we were able to make your lives difficult.”

“I hope we can return the favor,” Jacobi grumbled to his half an egg, not loud enough for Xie to hear.

“We were already here, so not very far away from Sanamsargüi.  A group of us went to find you.  We went to the industrial district on the outskirts of town after we heard you jumped into the canal, but I thought our luck hadn’t panned out.  I thought you died in the water.  I was already leaving Sanamsargüi when I got a call that you two were found again.  Found _alive_.  I ordered you be detained and treated in a way that fit your status as traitors.”

A ghost of a snarl crossed Maxwell’s face across the table.  

“Now we have you, Noether,” she smiled coldly at Maxwell.  

“You don’t ‘have’ me, Xie, I’m lending you my services for a price.  Don’t forget that or it might come back to bite you.   _Again_ ,” Maxwell said coldly.  

“I don’t make the same mistakes twice,” Xie said through bared teeth.  Then she went on,  “Once you get into the records building then, hopefully, Jouguet might actually be of use.”

“What the Hell is _that_ supposed to mean?!” snapped Jacobi, offended.  He knew Maxwell was the smarter of the two of them; that was obvious.  But he definitely wasn’t useless!  He was smart!  He was the best at what he did!  

“You destroy things, right?”

“All the damn time,” Jacobi responded with a growl.  It was an understatement on both of their parts.  Jacobi lived for destruction, but Xie would have no way of knowing how deeply his love ran.  And he destroyed things constantly.  It was his job.  It was his hobby.  It was his life.  

“How well do you know fire?” she asked.  

Offense melted away.  Jacobi grinned broadly.  Maxwell was clearly fighting back a laugh.  How well did he know fire?   _“Oh Xie Yuxia,”_ thought Jacobi, _“you don’t know how lucky you are.”_  Besides Things that Go Boom, Things that Burned were probably his favorite Things that Broke Other Things in the world.  “You’ve come to the right guy,” he said aloud.  

He figured there would be computer records.  He was glad to know he would be let loose on a room full of paper.  It would be a good way to get out his aggression.  

“Well, it’s time for you both to put your destructive tendencies to good use,” Xie said, with a hint of disgust in her voice.  

“Right, because you _didn’t_ just buy like a crap-ton of ballistics tech off us,” Jacobi rolled his eyes.

“Out of necessity!” snapped Xie.

“A knife is a necessity,” said Jacobi, “a missile if just for fun.”

“Up against the PLA?!  The Chinese government?!  A knife is suicide!  We need the biggest weapons we can get!  We are not going to die!  We are going to win!” Xie said.

Jacobi laughed in her face.  “You’re going to die.”  

She tried to punch him again but this time Jacobi knocked her fist out of the way. They were on their feet. Guns pointed at Jacobi, but he didn’t care.  If she wanted to start something, he would finish it.  Before Xie could respond or anyone could pull the trigger, Maxwell jumped in to interrupt the fight.  “You need us and we need you!  We’re _helping_ you!  And if we’re going to get you into this records office we need supplies!”

Both Jacobi and Xie turned their attention to her.  Xie didn’t throw her next punch.  She lowered her fists as Jacobi lowered his.  Xie cleared her throat, “Tell me what you need to do this job.”

“Laptop, tablet, wireless keyboard,” Maxwell said flatly.

Xie turned her attention back to Jacobi.  “You?”

“I’ll give you a shopping list,” Jacobi answered.  Jacobi was going to need an accelerant, so he gave them a list of products he could reduce to their chemical components.  It wasn’t a full grocery list, but it was what he couldn’t cannibalize from something he already had.  “And a box of matches.”

Using household items to make crappy accelerant.  God, it was like middle school all over again.


	16. Jasmin Noether & Jay Jouguet; Hacker & Arsonist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xilinhot, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, China

 

Jacobi made himself a chemistry lab in their apartment’s kitchen.  When Maxwell checked up on him, he was sitting cross-legged on the tiled floor.  It was freezing cold, probably because he had the window open and several table fans going to get rid of any fumes.  “Careful.  The air’s full of phthalates, ethylene glycol, and a couple other things.  Your gas-mask is by the door if you want it.”  He wasn’t wearing his but it hung around his neck, just in case.  He picked up his clipboard, uncapped a Sharpie with his teeth, and added a few more letters and numbers to the chemical equation growing on the pad.

She picked up the M50 and held it in her hand without putting it on.  The air was faintly chemical-scented, but she didn’t think she’d be in here long enough to lose more than a few brain cells.  She was weirdly fond of the M50 Joint Service General Purpose Mask.  It had been a present from Jacobi for her birthday when he was trying to hide the fact that he had followed her instructions and gotten her an accessory kit for her soldering gun like she requested.  But she also knew he wanted her to have the gas-mask for when they were working together.  She couldn’t say it hadn’t come in handy over the past year.  In addition to missions, it meant she could visit Jacobi during tests without risking the inhalation of carbon monoxide, phosphorus, or something even worse.

At present, he was surrounded by glass soda bottles with measurements drawn in Sharpie on their sides, Pyrex measuring cups, and various bottles and packages now emptied of their original contents:  several different colors of nailpolish, nailpolish remover, antifreeze, a baggie that – according to the label – once contained mothballs, coffee creamer, a clip of his RIA ammo, several bullets cut open, the powder stored in a small plastic bowl, amongst other things.  He had been using the electric stove as a bunsen burner. It was presently turned off.  On it was a metal pot with a yellowy fluid collected at the base.  Investigating the fridge, Maxwell found glass and metal containers each labeled with a chemical equation and IUPAC name.

“Is the air in here going to ignite?” Maxwell asked, closing the fridge.  

Jacobi paused and looked ceiling-ward, one eyebrow raised, as if it was the first time he was thinking it over.  “...Probably not,” he decided, “but don’t bring an open flame in here.”

“Doing your nails?” she asked, toeing an empty bottle of nailpolish remover that had rolled away from the others piled behind him along with the empty bottles of nail polish.

“Ha. Ha.” he said, holding a Pyrex measuring cup of a waxy white material at eye-level.  “I needed the acetone.”  He nodded to a capped soda bottle of clear liquid.  The label, a strip of duct tape, had “ _C_ _3_ _H_ _6_ _O (Propan-2-one_ )” written on it in Sharpie.  Jacobi slapped another duct tape label (he had several at the ready, stuck to the edge of the counter) over the cup he was holding.  He picked up the Sharpie and uncapped it with his teeth.  He quickly wrote out, _“C_ _10_ _H_ _16_ _O (1,7,7-trimethylbicyclo [2.2.1]heptan-2-one),”_ taking up all of the duct tape to do so.  He put the Pyrex down.

“How’s it going?” she asked after he was done.

He heaved a sigh and capped the Sharpie.  “Oh, _awesome_ .  Best. Day. Ever.  I feel like I’m in high school again.  Crappy supplies, looking at the ingredients of every damn thing to see what I can get out of them, making my own beakers out of soda bottles…yeah, I _definitely_ missed this.” Jacobi might not have known Mandarin, but he was fluent in sarcasm.  It may have even been his first language.

“I bet your parents loved you turning the kitchen into a laboratory,” Maxwell said.  

“To my credit, it was usually the garage, whenever we had one.  They got real pissed when I was eight and figured out I could use dad’s antiperspirant and lighter as a flamethrower…” He trailed off and sighed at the memory. “It’s not like mom ever really used her garden anyway.” Maxwell chuckled a little and he grinned back.  “What about your primitive backwoods lab?” he asked, nudging her leg.  

“Computers are nowhere near as dangerous as arson.”  

“Only _occasional_ arson,” Jacobi pointed out.  “And usually accidental.”

“My lab was in my room.  And I used to take parts off computers people were throwing away.   One time when I was in high school, my parents found out. They said I was bringing home trash and…” she trailed off.  “Well, it took a while to get back to where I had been.”

Jacobi glanced up at her again, but he didn’t say anything.  She was grateful for that.  

“Will you be ready by tonight?” Maxwell asked, changing the subject.

Jacobi let out a breath of consideration, staring at his clipboard in thought. “I’ll have _something_ for tonight.  You?”

Maxwell shook her head. “I’ve been writing a code-breaking program and a virus while you’ve been in here probably giving yourself brain damage.  It’s not going to be pretty or subtle but…” she shrugged.  

“But you’ll have _something_ ,” Jacobi provided, glancing up at her.  

“Exactly,” she sighed.  “It will get the job done.”  

Maxwell remained quiet as Jacobi carefully poured two of the strange fluids together, one the consistency and color of Nyquil, the other viscous and mucusy yellow.  The bottle smoked as they mixed together, and Jacobi paused for a second.  Carefully, he lowered it to the ground.  He leaned back and held up one hand as if he would shove Maxwell out the door, the other reached over to the fire extinguisher between the sink and refrigerator.  But the smoking stopped and Jacobi let out a sigh of relief.  He finished mixing the chemicals with a glass rod, _tink_ ing it against the lip of the bottle.  The two mixed together into a deep-purple something, reduced to about half the volume of its two components.  

Maxwell left him to continue his work with a “good luck.”

“You too,” Jacobi said, carefully standing to add the purple goo to the pot on the stove.  

Maxwell peeked in on him once more after a loud _bang!_ called her away from her programming.  Opening the door, she found Jacobi in a cloud of black smoke.  From the middle of the cloud came a cough, and when the revolving fans dissipated the smoke, Maxwell couldn’t help but laugh.  Fine black powder stained his spare glasses, his face, hair, and his right arm – from where his fingers held the guilty bottle to his shoulder, but he was otherwise unharmed.  It made it look like he was wearing a single sleeve under the borrowed t-shirt.  Jacobi looked up at her in surprise over the frames of his now-opaque glasses and he started laughing, too.  He put the bottle down and wiped his glasses on the clean part of his shirt.  

When he finally emerged from the kitchen, she was lying on her stomach pattering out the last few lines of code for her virus. In his hand Jacobi held a small milk carton.  “Is that going to be enough?” Maxwell asked, nodding to the carton.

Jacobi eyed it.  “Oh yeah.  It’s _too_ much.  This is some really tough stuff,” he grinned.  It wasn’t quite his usual enthusiasm, but clearly he had managed to make something he liked well enough.

“I’m sure,” Maxwell looked back at her screen.  Just a few more lines and then she would have the machine equivalent of _Naegleria fowleri_ .  No, _Naegleria fowleri_ if each and every amoeba could infect the victim with Alzheimer's as it ate away at their brain.  It was disgustingly harsh, but at least it would be quick in its brutality.  And at least the system wasn’t sentient, as far as she knew.  Although it wasn’t as if she _hadn’t_ turned viruses like this on living machines.  But she was always quick, a matter of microseconds or seconds rather than hours or days.  That was the most Maxwell could hope for: the ability to make up for the horror she caused, either by being mercifully brief or undoing the memories of her crimes.  She never liked it, but it was better than the alternative.  

“And…I’m done,” Maxwell said, removing her fingers from the keyboard.  She ejected the thumb drive from the laptop and deposited it in her pocket along with the other program.  They were labeled, as mixing the two up would be fatal.  

“So now we go meet with Xie?” Jacobi asked.

“Yep,” Maxwell answered.  She closed the laptop and stretched.  “Let’s get this over with.”

 

***

 

They met Xie in her office, one of the larger apartments in the building.  It was spartan, which didn’t surprise Maxwell in the least.  There was a map pinned up behind her desk, marked up with string and tacks.  Yellowing newspaper articles hung around the office.  Aside from that, nothing in the apartment had anything recognizably unique.  As if Xie’s life began and ended with the Coalition.  

Except…

There were actually two things in Xie’s office that surprised Maxwell.  Two photographs in simple frames on her desk.  In a single second, Xie became far more human.

One showed two people, a man and his child, a son, judging by the school uniform.  The man held his son’s hand.  The boy was probably a little younger than Haojun.  He wore a flower barrette in his hair.   _Her_ hair, Maxwell realized studying the photograph, even if she wasn’t referring to herself that way when the photo was taken, because that _must_ have been Xie herself. They had too many features in common for it to be anyone else.  Unless she had a twin brother, that had to be her.  The man holding her hand had to be her father. He had the same narrow nose, the same broadness to his frame.  They both looked happy, the young Xie ecstatically so in the way that only children can.  

Then there was a photo of an older man and woman and a young woman who wasn’t Xie. A family portrait Xie was not a part of.  When Xie saw where Maxwell was looking, she discreetly called her attention away, slapping a floorplan on the desk.  

“This is the hall of records in Xilinhot.”

“Do we get weapons?” Jacobi asked bitterly. “Or if we get caught, are we supposed to just hope our _charm_ will save us from any human interference?”

“Your charm won’t save you from anything,” Xie assured him.  “Will you get caught?”

“I don’t know!” Jacobi said frustratedly, “It’s not like I’m planning on it!  I didn’t plan on getting pistol-whipped either, but _that_ didn’t exactly pan out!”  He gestured to the lump on his head, smaller already than the night before, but still visible at his hairline.  

“We’ll arm you.  Tonight, and not before.  Any preferences?”

Jacobi raised his eyebrows.  Maxwell glanced over at him; it was Jacobi’s wheelhouse.  “What’ve you got?” Jacobi asked with a slow grin.

“Makarov pistol, police revolver, Type 92 handgun, and Type 77 pistol,” Xie provided.  

“Nothing over 9 millimeter, huh?” Jacobi asked.

“You won’t need it,” Xie assured him.

“Gimme a Makarov,” Jacobi said with a roll of his eyes.

“I’ll take a police revolver,” Maxwell said.  When Jacobi gave her a confused look, she shrugged, “I don’t know guns like you do.  And I already held one.”

“It’s only six rounds,” Jacobi pointed out.

“Have I ever needed more?” Maxwell asked smugly.

“Yeah, when there’s more than six guys,” Jacobi said, crossing his arms.

“Don’t backseat drive, Jouguet,” Maxwell said with a sigh.  

“Fine, but don’t come crying to me when you’re trying to shove a bullet into your inky-dinky revolver in the middle of a firefight!” said Jacobi, throwing up his arms.  

“If we can get back to the task at hand…”  Xie loudly cleared her throat. “Dr. List – Dr. Noether, here are Huang’s notes.” She slid a binder across the table to them.  Maxwell scooped it up and began flipping through the pages, reading what she could.  Her understanding of hànzì wasn’t excellent, but she had practiced extensively before they left Florida and she picked out what she could.  Luckily, brand names were written out in English.  Maxwell looked up at Xie as she began to speak again. “He gathered extensive information to streamline the process.  He was always very exact,” Xie said, looked down again, frowning hard.  Then she shook her head and looked back up at them.  “We want this done quickly, and as quietly as possible.”  

Jacobi was looking over the grid.  “That won’t be a problem. Right, Noether?”

“Not at all,” Maxwell chuckled. On the first page Huang had given the brand name of the security system.  Maxwell was well acquainted with it and it wouldn’t be a problem.  “It’s a CAS-779 EyeTect system.  I could do this in my sleep.”  It wouldn’t have been so easy for almost anyone else.  The EyeTect was always tricky and the CAS-779 was fitting for a place technically owned by the Chinese government.  But for Maxwell, anything commercial was a breeze.  

Jacobi was hunched over the map.  “We go in through the back.  There’s a control panel there.”

“Good,” Maxwell said.  She looked up at Xie. “My hacking software can get us into the building by finding the code.  It has a high attempt limit.”

“Not so fast, Noether.  They’ve got cameras here,” he pointed to the back entrance, “and here,” he pointed directly inside the door.  “And the primary control is here.” He pointed to a room at the end of the hall.  

“Behind...looks like manual locks,” Maxwell said.  “Well, you’ll be useful after all.”

“We need balaclavas and black spray paint,” Jacobi said to Xie, ignoring Maxwell.  “I’ve already got C4, but I’ll need some dry fuses.”

Xie nodded and wrote some characters down on a piece of paper.  

“And a hair tie,” Maxwell said.

Jacobi looked over at her.  “You usually bring, oh…” he pretended to calculate, “…thirty thousand.  What happened?”

“They’re at the bottom of a canal,” Maxwell sighed.

“Maybe if you’d saved your pack –”

“And left you to drown?  Yeah, maybe I _should’ve_ ,” Maxwell said dryly.

“Fine, fine. Get the lady a hair tie,” Jacobi said, holding up his hands.  Xie had already added it to the list.  “Does the CAS-whatever-whatever-EyeThing have an AI?”

“No, thankfully,” Maxwell said.  “Not even a primitive one.  It’s entirely non-sentient.  The locks to the records are all electronic, which is a mistake on their part.  I’ll stay in the security room, shut down the smoke detectors, and open up the rooms we need to get into.  How much time will you need to put the fire out?”

“None,” Jacobi answered.  “It’ll burn itself out.  You’ll see, I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”  He grinned.  

“While you’re in there burning and pillaging and salting the Earth, I’ll hit the main databanks with the virus.  It will destroy everything.” She looked over at Xie as she said this, “If there’s anything in there you want to save, you need to tell me now.  This thing is bad...very bad –”

“You have such a way with words,” muttered Jacobi.  Maxwell stepped on his foot.  

“– and I can’t stop it once it gets going.” Maxwell finished as Jacobi winced.  

“I don’t need anything saved.  How did you put it?  Burning and pillaging?  Do that.  Burn and pillage as much as you can,” Xie said confidently.  

“Okay, but you’d better not change your mind later,” Maxwell shrugged.  

“By that point someone’ll probably realize something’s up.  We’ll need pick up ASAP –”  Jacobi went on.

“As Soon As Possible,” Maxwell said, replacing Jacobi’s English language military jargon.  

“Do you know around when you’ll need to be picked up?” Xie asked.

“What time are you dropping us off?” Jacobi asked.

“Midnight,” Xie answered with certainty.  

“Then 12:30-ish?” Jacobi looked over at Maxwell for clarification.

“Make it 12:40 just to be safe,” Maxwell shrugged.  

“That’s all?” Xie asked.  

“That’s all,” Maxwell agreed.

They hammered out a few more details.  Whenever Jacobi and Maxwell teased each other, Xie looked from one of them to the other with her thin eyebrows raised.  She seemed genuinely surprised by their camaraderie.  When they were done, Xie summoned Wang – who had lost that sweet expression she had worn when they first met, and her polite demeanor had gotten icier – and the woman lead them away.  

Late that night, they were again blindfolded – as if they would try to escape when they were again working for pay – and bundled into an SUV.  Maxwell and Jacobi both peeked out from under their blindfolds as they went.  They caught each other’s exposed eyes and smirked, Jacobi clearly swallowing a laugh.  

It was the first proper city they’d seen in quite a while.  They were still surrounded by steppe on all sides, snowy fields where sheep would wander in the spring, and distant hills.  There was a river and lake Maxwell thought might be artificial – not that she got a very good look at it.  The city itself was ordinary, and gray and white from the snow.  They passed shopping centers, playgrounds, buildings with red sloping roofs, temples, squares.  There were many statues of Mongolian horsemen, a reminder of the distant past.  And there was sign welcoming them to Xanadu, a reference Maxwell only half knew.  

Once they were let out, they were armed.  Two guns were on them during the process, just in case. Jacobi was handed his Makarov and extra ammunition, then Maxwell was given her police revolver and the same.  They were dropped off a safe distance away, but close enough that their query was in sight.  They crept around to the back entrance, pulling down their balaclavas as they rounded the building, still out of sight of the security cameras.  She and Jacobi stood at the alley entrance to the hall of records.  Time to get to work.  

Everything went off without a hitch.

Jacobi blacked out the camera as Maxwell set up her touch screen.  Once inside, Jacobi repeated the process on the second camera while Maxwell reengaged the lock on the back door.  With a sliver of C4, Jacobi reduced the door to the security room to splinters.  Maxwell got him into the second floor room.  Then...just the right amount of the foul-smelling liquid accelerant. A single match. A burst of flame, and in a single vicious tornado of brilliant fire everything was gone.  It burned itself out, consuming the oxygen faster than it could be replaced in the room. The filing cabinets had warped, their open drawers dripped into strange, modern sculptures. The floor was still there, but substantially weakened. Whoever set foot on it next would probably end up in the entry hall. The ceiling was in the same state.  There was only a fine powder left of the documents. Maxwell hooked her virus to the server.  They had burned the records to the ground, literally, metaphorically – and quickly.  

They were done by 12:35.  

Everyone was impressed. Neither Maxwell nor Jacobi really had the energy for it. Xie promised that the next day she would get them to the border. That would put them in Mongolia a full day ahead of Kepler.

They went to their room and Jacobi fell into bed with a groan.

“Tired?” Maxwell asked, pulling her hair out of its bun.  The messy curls fell down her neck and back.  

“Nah,” he said sarcastically into his pillow.

“We barely did anything,” Maxwell pointed out.

“It’s been a long three days.”

Maxwell heaved a sigh that turned into a yawn halfway through.  She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t exhausted too.  “You have a point.  Are you going to bed?” she asked as he yanked the blankets up over his head.

“No,” he said.

“Then what are you doing?” Maxwell asked.

“Gonna get ready for bed,” he said.  “Brush my teeth and stuff, _mom_.”

“Are you actually going to do that?” Maxwell smirked at him as he actively fell asleep in front of her, like a pyromaniac puppy all tuckered out from the park.

“Look at me go,” Jacobi said.  

“Plug in your arm before you fall asleep,” Maxwell said.

“Uh-huh,” he replied.

“I am going to take a shower and you need to plug in your arm,” Maxwell told him.

“Definitely.”

“It was in rice last night, you don’t have an infinite charge.  Plug in your damn arm.”

“Yep. Doing that right now.”

Maxwell rolled her eyes and crossed to the bedroom door.  Just before closing it she said, “I’m not doing it for you.”  

“Yep,” Jacobi said, burrowing deeper into his blankets. Maxwell wasn’t sure he even knew what he was answering anymore.


	17. Jasmin Noether & Jay Jouguet; Somewhere Else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China

Haojun didn't tell anyone about the base in Delberelt.  He didn’t say they’d probably leave Hebei for Inner Mongolia.  It was purely luck that the army found out.  Luck, and a call in from a local resident.  

Out for a run early one morning before school, a local shop owner's son, Zhou Kuian, saw a very pretty woman, later identified as Wang Mingxi, out by the storehouses on the outskirts of town.  He slowed his jog to watch her.  She was a little older than he, but,he said later – after he was evacuated – he was still considering asking for her number.  He was practicing his line of introduction when she opened the storehouse.  Kuian’s voice died in his throat.  His eyes went wide.  Inside were not stores of wool, or a refrigerator for dairy, or the bulky shadows of farming machinery, but instead, the distinct outlines of guns and a very real missile (“like from a movie” he said later, in quiet terror at first, then, when reporters were calling for his story, with far more confidence.)  He ran off away from the pretty girl, far faster than he had ever run in his life.  A safe distance away, he called the police.  The police called the People’s Liberation Army.  

Li Haojun was miles away from all this in Shijiazhuang, in his cousin Li Hekun’s home.   _ Haojun’s  _ home now.  Hekun lived with his wife, Meiling, daughter, Yilan, aged six, and now Haojun, too.  He had been living there since they uncovered his father's body just outside the now-razed base in the Yan Mountains.  

The morning Kuian found the weapon cache, Haojun was awakened by Meiling with a gentle shake. “Wake up!  There’s a woman here.  A Captain in the army.  She wants to talk to you.  She  _ needs  _ to talk to you.  Urgently.” 

“What?!” Haojun went from sound-asleep to wide-awake with those few words.  Mention of Captain Jiang – and who else could it be? – jarred him so badly he didn't think he could ever be tired again.  What could she want?  Why was she here?  Why was she here  _ now?   _ Yesterday, he lied to Captain Jiang and the others, telling them he didn’t have any more information.  He thought he was finally free of this.  

“Her name is Captain Jiang Yuwen.  JunJun, what's going on?” she asked urgently.  

Haojun didn’t answer.  Cousin Meiling must have been used to it by now.  He never answered.  He slid out of bed and shrugged his shoulders at her in response.  He had been sworn to secrecy about everything.  But he was used to that.  He had been living in secrecy his entire life.  Even his extended family didn't know anything about what his parents did.  No one really knew how deep it went, not even Haojun himself. 

He had been on edge since it happened less than a week ago.  Since everything went wrong.  Since he made his mistake.  Since his father was taken from him, from this world, from himself, and Haojun’s life was suddenly upended.  He felt as if went from being a child to an adult all at once.  He suddenly had no one to turn to.  He suddenly lost the man he loved most in the world and everyone else he ever knew in one horrible moment. 

Alone and lonely.  Terrified.  Unsure.  Everything felt like it was unbalanced.  He couldn’t even hate anymore.  

He missed his father, but he found himself missing the others as well.  Hu Maihong was dead, too.  So was Huang Zhonghao.  And he missed them, especially Uncle Maihong, nearly as much as his father, even though the former had helped murder the latter.  

Uncle Maihong had been his tutor in the times his family had moved around and Haojun couldn't go to real school.  Maihong had been the one to most encourage Haojun in his studies, to compliment his writing.  Even though Haojun thought his stories weren't very good, Uncle Maihong, who never seemed to get excited about  _ anything _ , was always excited to read them.  And whenever Haojun had been sad or angry, Uncle Maihong had been the rock to which he could tether himself.  To his credit, Maihong had gladly been that emotional support.  

Sometimes, he told jokes.  They were usually puns that Haojun thought might only have been funny because of how how silly they were.  He loved traditional operas and tried to instill that love in Haojun, who never had the patience to sit through them.  Nor did he care about the metaphors or the costumes, or the performances, or the incredible vocal range of the singers, or anything else that so impressed Uncle Maihong.  But Maihong had Mingxi to watch opera with him.  She could even sing along. 

Uncle Zhonghao was more outgoing, but somehow not as warm as Maihong.  Haojun thought Maihong was smarter, but Zhonghao knew more random facts than any man Haojun had ever met.  He seemed to know about every strange event that had ever happened in history.  He knew how rocket ships were built and how power plants worked.  He knew every statistic of every player in every sport.  He watched basketball with Haojun when no one else could.  Even if he was busy, he took time off to watch the games.  He was full of facts and he would fire them back along with the ball.  Uncle Zhonghao was also very funny, but by accident. So stiff and polite until you got him excited. But he tried to retain that formal demeanor no matter what.  Big sister Namei and Haojun used to tease him constantly. 

At least Big Sister Namei and Big Sister Mingxi were safe. The Coalition members captured in the Yan Mountains were now being held in Beijing; and one, the hacker, Pan Zemin, told Haojun what he wanted to know, although he had a heartbreaking look of disgust on his face the whole time.  Haojun had only visited once and his courage had failed him, and he left early.  But now he knew Namei and Mingxi was still with the others. 

Namei could be harsh sometimes.  She had a short fuse and a bad temper.  She became very serious around anyone older than she, but around Haojun, she loosened up.  She was the newest person in the inner circle and the youngest, and Haojun wondered if that was why they had become so close, and if that was why she acted more like a person and less like a soldier around him.  They told jokes and made faces at each other.  She told him scary ghost stories and urban legends.  Zhonghao  _ watched _ basketball, but Big Sister Namei even found time to  _ play  _ with Haojun.  It meant a lot to him, especially when he felt friendless and lonely, the youngest person in his life by at least a half decade.  They played basketball when the weather permitted and table tennis when it didn’t.

And then there was Mingxi.  She was the kindest woman in all the world.  She was interested in everything and listened to what Haojun had to say, no matter how unimportant.  She was an amazing artist and drew pictures all the time, just squiggling things in the margins of reports and articles.  She loved everything to do with music and visual art, and if she liked a song, she couldn’t help but sing along.  

After they destroyed the base in the Yan Mountains, Haojun decided he was done with helping the PLA.  He didn't think he could anymore.  Even though he knew they killed his father, each of  _ their _ lives mattered, too.  He no longer had any warmth for the People's Coalition of Freedom, the body that killed his father, but he still cared about every member.  Big Sister Yuxia, the bravest person in the entire world, who always told him to be himself, no matter what.  Uncle Zhonghao and his facts.  Uncle Donghui, who acted tough, but loved animals.  Big Sister Namei, who could beat anyone in any sport, but sometimes lost to Haojun on purpose.  Big Sister Mingxi and her amazing drawings, the best of which she always gave him.  Uncle Maihong, who gave him a notebook for his last birthday so he could write wherever he went.  And every single one of the others.

Haojun didn't think he could bear knowing that they, too, were gone and it had been his fault.  He could barely stand knowing that horrible truth about Uncle Zhonghao and Uncle Maihong.  That was why, after the raid in the Yan Mountains and after he saw what was left with his own eyes, he hadn’t been so liberal with the information he gave the army.  Now he was afraid they had figured him out. Would they kill him, too?

Still in his pajamas, Haojun came downstairs to see Captain Jiang sitting stiffly on the living room sofa.  She looked at Haojun with colder eyes than she ever had before.  Any kindness was gone from them.  “Would you mind giving us the room?” Captain Jiang asked Hekun and Meiling.  

“Of...of course,” Hekun said, taking his wife’s hand. As they left the room and returned upstairs, Jiang looked back at Haojun.

“Why didn't you tell us about Delberelt?" she asked without further greeting as soon as the older Lis were out of earshot.  She spoke quietly, but so sharply and with such disappointment it made Haojun wince.

“I don’t know,” he lied.  He had practiced an actual story, that he didn’t know about any more bases, that he had been kept in the dark because of his age.  He promised himself he wouldn’t be afraid, he would tell them the carefully crafted lie.  He had tried so hard.  But now that he had been caught, he was petrified.  The story melted away.  

Over the past few days he had learned a lot.  One of those things was that you couldn’t make fear go away.  Fear would always follow you.  It would always remain.  You could be afraid, but you keep going, and that was very hard to do.  That was what he had to learn, not how to make it disappear, because he never, ever would, he had to learn how to keep going.

“A runner this morning saw an agricultural storehouse filled with weapons. When we investigated, there were missiles. That sounds like the weapons your father described to us.   _ You  _ said you told us everywhere they would hide the weapons.   _ You _ said you told us everything.  You were  _ lying  _ then.  And I think you’re lying to me now, _ ”  _ said Jiang slowly, her eyes never leaving Haojun’s face.  He worked very hard not to meet her gaze.  

“I don’t know,” repeated Haojun helplessly.

“Does the Coalition have a base in Delberelt?” she asked fiercely.

“I don’t know!” Haojun shouted desperately.

They did.  One of their largest.  And, if they put tech in Delberelt, it meant at least one member of the inner circle was probably in the base.  Maybe even Yuxia.  Haojun could identify the building, but he wouldn't do it.

“Shh!” Jiang said and she took a moment to soften her tone, “I know this is scary, but remember what happened to your father.  He wanted to help us.  He knew the Coalition was dangerous.” 

That was a lie.  

His father never said that.  He said the Coalition would  _ fall _ .  That its members were  _ in danger. _  That Haojun and he were safe because they were helping the government, not because the Coalition would hurt them. He felt his hands ball into fists.

He had no friends in the world.  Even if he cared about the Coalition members, he could not forgive them for what they did, and now the people he turned to in his neediest time were lying to him.

“Liar,” he muttered under his breath.

That flash in Jiang's eyes.  The one he saw when she swore back when they first met at the police station, when he said the Coalition had probably been alerted.  He could see a powerful anger boiling in her. “What did you say?” she demanded. 

“I said ‘liar’!” answered Haojun, his voice shaking, but defiant.  

The woman moved so quickly he barely saw it.  She reached out and slapped him across the face.  It stung horribly,  he thought he could feel his face swelling.  He put his hand to his cheek in disbelief.  Tears welled in his eyes from pain, shock, and anger.  “Watch your mouth, Li Haojun!” she said, her expression sour.  

“Watch yours!” he shouted back.  “Don’t lie to me!  Especially not about my father!” 

“Don’t lie to  _ us _ , brat!” snapped Jiang.  

But Haojun wasn’t listening, “My father changed sides, but that wasn’t why!”  

“You don’t know that,” said Jiang.  

He did, but instead of pursuing it, he remembered the lie he had concocted earlier to tell Jiang.  He steamrolled on, “I’ve helped you as much as I can!  I don’t know anything else!  They didn’t tell me!  They said I was too young!  My father was afraid of getting me too involved in the Coalition!  I want to help but I can’t!" Then he lowered his voice, his act was helped by the fact that he could no longer keep the sobs down. He could no longer shout over the lump in his throat. “I can’t help anymore.”

That was only partially a lie.  He couldn’t because his heart wouldn’t let him.  Not when “helping” meant death.  He didn’t want any more death.  Not on either side.  

Jiang got to her feet. “I hope you’ve made the right choice. I hope you don’t regret what has happened today.  And what will happen.” 

“What...what will happen?” asked Haojun nervously.

“There will be a war,” she assured him. Without another word, she crossed to the door and left Li Hekun’s house, forever. Haojun stood in her wake, open-mouthed and terrified.  Tears streamed down his face.  Her words kept playing over and over again in his mind.

_ There will be war. _

Haojun went slack.  His heart hurt.  If there was war, he wouldn’t fight in it.  He had no side to fight on.  He was sure of one thing, he was not a soldier, and as long as he lived, no one else would die because of him.

_ There will be war. _

Maybe so.  But Haojun would not do it again.  He would be someone who would fix lives, not destroy them.  He couldn’t hate anymore.  More importantly he couldn’t kill.


	18. Jasmin Noether & Jay Jouguet; Soldiers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delberelt, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, China

 

The first blast came around 6:00 in the morning.  It shook the building like an earthquake, rattled the cots, one of the windows broke.  Jacobi was immediately on his feet.  He knew it wasn’t an earthquake or even a sonic boom.  It was a rocket – he wasn’t entirely sure of the make yet – hitting a target very close by. 

“What the Hell was that?” Maxwell asked, wide-awake.  She stumbled out of bed and to her feet. 

Jacobi was glad he had fallen asleep in his clothes.  He was ready for whatever was going on.  He ignored the red light on his arm.  “I’m not sure, but we’re probably gonna find out.”

He heard Maxwell dressing in the dark.  He took his borrowed gun from under his pillow and holstered it.  Maxwell was going to regret taking a six-shooter.  And he regretted not having his modified RIA clip and only a handful of spare rounds for the Makarov.  He was in the process of tugging on his boots when he heard a familiar sound.  A familiar hum.  A familiar whistling.  He would recognize it anywhere: a Viduus HEAA rocket.  

“That was one of mine…” Jacobi said.  Then came the familiar blast.  He could see the burst of orange and white light out the window.  Something was blown up on the street in front of the building.  “And they are firing it  _ way  _ too close!”

Maxwell spoke frankly, “We need to get out of here.”

Jacobi glanced over at her, “Yeah, no crap!”

The sounds of chaos filtered up from the street.  People screaming.  Dogs barking.  Gunfire.  Car alarms blaring.  If they kept it up with the heavy artillery, this was place was going to be a barren warzone well before lunch.  Civilian casualties, leveled buildings, the whole nine exploded yards.  He and Maxwell needed to be far away from here before then.  They could not be attached to this.  Hopefully it wasn’t too late to get out of here without their situation getting any worse. Jacobi had the sneaking suspicion it already was.  This was that kind of mission, after all.

Jacobi grabbed his pack and Maxwell holstered her gun.  They exchanged a glance and a nod before breaching the corridor. The building was empty and dark.  The street outside, glimpsed through the window, was chaos.  They made it to the lobby without incident, without even being seen.

“Looks like we’re in the clea—“ Maxwell began, but she stopped when she heard a sound.  A  _ roar _ .  A sound that put nature to shame.  It was an Honos Surface-to-Surface Missile.  

Three thoughts went very quickly through Jacobi’s head.  One: Maxwell and he needed to learn to stop saying crap like that.  It never turned out well.  Two: This was an absolute waste of an SSM, they didn’t even need RPGs in a place like this, nothing was  _ armored.   _ They just needed a handful of grenades, maybe a flamethrower. Or some napalm if they were feeling particularly destructive.  The way they were doing it now?  They were wasting their valuable resources! Three: There was a very good chance they were going to die here.

Jacobi glanced over at Maxwell.  She looked almost sheepish, “Sorry.”  If the first explosion shook the building like an earthquake, this was like the earth was tearing itself apart, trying to dump them into the mantle.  The building exploded around them, collapsing from the shockwaves of the blast.

A chunk of stone hit Jacobi squarely on the left side of his face.  He felt his glasses break and fall, and his cheek split painfully open.  Hot blood steamed and dripped down his face and onto the collar of his coat.  He was shocked it didn’t break his cheekbone. But in the chaos of the building falling around them, Jacobi barely registered the pain.

“Daniel!” It was Maxwell shouting his name through the tumult as the debris fell like an avalanche around them.  

“Alana!” he called back, grabbing for her in the insane chaos. Her hand gripped his, she held tightly.  He squeezed it back and would never let go.  He would not lose her.  She would not lose him.  Or if this was it...they would go together.  

And then there was nothing left of the building.  Jacobi looked around and found himself protected by a partially-fallen beam that made a little cave around them.  Suddenly, the quaking stopped.  The rubble settled.  Maxwell and he were encased in the dark, but for the strips of sunlight cutting through the cracks in the cave.  He could hear his own fast breathing. He felt the pain from his quickly swelling face and he felt Maxwell’s hand.  Then he felt it clutch his. Looking up, he saw Maxwell, her eyes squeezed closed, her hand white-knuckled in his.

_ They were alive! _

“Daniel?” Maxwell asked nervously before stating, “we’re alive!”

“Seems like it,” Jacobi answered.  

Maxwell released his hand and shifted carefully, making sure not to bring their shelter down on them.  She unclipped her flashlight from her belt to get a better look around. He saw her face in the full light of her flashlight and laughed. Her pale face and brown hair were covered in white cement dust.

“What?  What’s so funny?” 

“You need to see your face!” Jacobi managed.  “You look like a picture of Marie Antoinette with the big wigs and the white faces!” 

“Stop laughing!” Maxwell said, but she was too, madly, chaotically, because they were alive.  They were alive again.  At least for this moment, at least for this second; for this breath, they were  _ alive _ ! Through her laughter, Maxwell said, “You’re going to get us caught, you idiot!” 

“We’re not sneaking out of this now, Maxwell,” he shook his head.  From the look on her face, he knew she had realized that, too.  The streets were alive with violence and noise.  The explosions were bright enough that they lit their shelter through the cracks.  Another life-or-death scenario.  Another end of the world.  

“What’s our plan?” Maxwell asked.  

“On three, we push our way up and shoot our way out.” 

“That’s your  _ only _ idea,” Maxwell said, rolling her eyes.  

“Do you have another one?” Jacobi demanded.  

Maxwell said nothing.  She did not.  

“Yeah, didn’t think so.  Besides, this always works,” Jacobi assured her.  

“It doesn’t work, it just hasn’t killed us yet,” Maxwell told him. 

“I count that as working.  Ready to test it again?” Jacobi stuffed a few things from his ruined pack into his pockets.  Two passports, fuses, C4, as many 9mm clips as he could shove into his belt pouches and pant pockets, his last pair of glasses – cracked, but still wearable. 

“Yeah, I’m ready to push my luck,” Maxwell agreed.  “One…Two…” 

“Three!” They said the last together.  

The light seemed far too bright and the sounds around them were impossibly loud as they broke out onto the street.  Police and soldiers were on one side, the Coalition on the other. Maxwell and Jacobi were in the middle.  The soldiers had trucks and, Jesus, tanks.  That was why the Coalition broke out the heavy artillery.  They actually needed it.  

Maxwell and he had to get out as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, odds were it wouldn’t be quickly enough.  Everything was light and noise and people.  The street shattered apart from launched grenades and rockets.  Glass from buildings was blown out everywhere from the heat and shockwaves.  Civilians were running, ducking down, being ushered to safety by soldiers and the Coalition both.  

Chaos.  And while Jacobi  _ loved  _ chaos, it wasn’t so great when you were in the middle of it and it had a tank gun level with your head.

“Jouguet!  Noether!”  Xie called to them through the crowd.  There was a burst of gunfire as she approached and the three dove behind a parked car.  The car’s alarm blared until a bullet cut through its battery cable and it moaned its last.  She was wearing her long hair in a tight ponytail down her back. As usual, a few strands fell into her face.  She wore a purple skirt, already torn at the hem and dirty.

_ “Does this woman own anything  _ but  _ skirts?”  _ the thought momentarily crossed Jacobi’s mind as a rocket took out a Jeep down the street.  

“What the Hell is going on?!” Maxwell demanded.

“They found us,” Xie said shortly, reloading her Justitia r ifle.  She popped over the side of the car and took out several oncoming soldiers.  

“I got that,” Jacobi said, picking off a soldier with his 9mm. He wished he had something bigger.  He wouldn’t be able to get through armor with this.  

“They found us – and our weapons,” Xie said, releasing a spray of shots, ducking the return fire.  “In order to protect ourselves, we engaged.”  Repeat.  “They called for reinforcements, but they are still outgunned.”

“ _ This  _ is them outgunned?” Jacobi asked.  “Because they seem like they’re doing just fine!”  A tank down the street exploded into shrapnel and gore.  Xie looked at Jacobi, eyebrows raised.  Jacobi shrugged, “Call it even.” 

“They came early,” Xie said.  “They were going to kill us in our sleep.” 

“I’m not feeling very pitying,” Maxwell told her, picking off whatever she could with her borrowed gun. Zhang rolled in beside them. “Get me a Mercury Rifle and Jouguet a Justicia or whatever other assault rifle you have.  And do it  _ right now!” _ Maxwell shouted at him. He looked at Xie who nodded.  He shouted something to Wen, who tossed a Mercury at him.  He passed it off to Maxwell.  Jacobi watched her lean across the hood and immediately pick off a rooftop sniper who had been taking aim at Xie.

Xie watched the man pitch forward and fall, along with his rifle, to the ground. “You…” 

“You’re welcome,” Maxwell snapped.

Finally, Jacobi was given an assault rifle.   Spray and pray.  They kept up this routine.  Maxwell picking off the most dangerous targets, Jacobi providing her with a curtain of bullets for protection. Bullets were nowhere near as rewarding as explosives, but against people, really, they were just as effective. If you knew what you were doing, it meant you didn’t die and the other guy did.  

“Reloading!”

And Xie covered  _ him _ .  Jacobi hadn’t been expecting that.  They kept up this choreography in the chaos for a short while more before their battered shelter was finally destroyed. 

“ _ Grenade! _ ” Jacobi shouted, as a Type 91 grenade rolled under the car.  All four of them bolted away. The bullet-ridden chassis exploded just as Zhang dove away.  Poor asshole wasn’t quite away enough. Not that Jacobi really felt any semblance of sorrow. Indeed, there was a pleasant jolt of schadenfreude at seeing the man who hit Maxwell die.  Xie shot the thrower in response with a roar of rage. Jacobi crept back for a second and looted the unused grenades from Zhang’s belt.  Maxwell provided protective fire for him.  “Hurry, Jouguet!” Maxwell snapped. 

“I got ‘em!  I got ‘em!” Jacobi shouted over the violence. They ducked behind a ruined Jersey barrier.  Jacobi sat with his back to the barrier, watching her six.  Maxwell watched his, leaning into her DMR as she took a rapid succession of shots.  “How are we going to get out of this one?” Jacobi groaned.  In general they avoided open war zones, and that was what Delberelt had become. 

“The same way we get out of everything,” Maxwell said.  She put the rifle against the lip of the barrier to fire upward at a sniper, removing a significant portion of his brain before he could even set up his rooftop perch.  

A BJ212 Beijing Jeep rounded the corner, machine gun at the ready. “Which is?” Jacobi asked through the pin clenched between his teeth.  He cooked a Mephitis frag grenade, tossing and catching it casually in one hand before hurling it into the approaching Jeep.  

“Together,” Maxwell provided, as the vehicle exploded behind her in a flash of light and spray of metal.  

Jacobi burst out laughing, “That’s the cheesiest line I’ve ever heard.” 

But she was right. They would get through this together.  Because that was how they got through everything. 

She hit him playfully on the shoulder as the world ended around them, “I thought you liked cheese.” 

  
  


***

 

Together or not, it was a rough fight.  

First, he ran out of grenades.  Then it was any caliber above 9mm.  He had to scavenge guns as best he could, but there wasn’t always time to grab them or weapons in convenient locations.  He became dependent on a few good shots from the Makarov.  Then he was starting to run low on ammo even for that.  Just a few of 12-round clips left. 

Then it got worse.  

Jacobi reached for another clip from his equipment belt. Halfway through the motion, his arm simply stopped.  

His fingers didn’t move.  Everything below his right bicep froze up.  His elbow wouldn’t bend.  His fingers hung open and useless. His arm fell limp and heavy.  He knew exactly what had happened.  His mechanical arm had run out of power.  He didn’t need to see the final green light blink out and the red LED disappear to know he’d screwed up.  Before Maxwell put in the LED battery display, Jacobi used to ignore the LCD display that warned him of the exact battery percentage, because it was not nearly as bright as its replacement and was easier to ignore. Ignoring it meant occasionally running out of power and the arm no longer being able to receive signals from his brain.  And he had done it again.  “Uh-oh…” he muttered.  

“Uh-oh?” Maxwell repeated. They positioned themselves in an alley, with a fallen building to one side and the wall of one still standing to the other, with easily accessed cover and no way to sneak up on them because of their positions. They stood back-to-back, a human clock, keeping 12 (Jacobi) and 6 (Maxwell) covered. It also meant they felt each other’s every movement.  Maxwell was the best shot in the SI, but her size meant that the recoil from the Mercury rifle gave her some trouble.  She braced for it, but Jacobi could feel every kick and jump digging into his back.  By now she must have realized his right arm fell still and limp.  She looked back at him.  He looked over at her.  Maxwell’s eyes went from the dead arm to Jacobi’s face, surprise tightening into a look of absolute rage.  “You idiot!” 

“Jasm –” he began.  

“Shut up!” she shouted. “I am not anywhere  _ near  _ done with you!” 

“Alana –” he attempted to defend himself more seriously, using her real name. 

“ _ No, _ don’t you  _ dare ‘ _ Alana’ me!” she shouted, snatching his gun from his left hand.  She shouldered her own rifle to reload his pistol. She took the cartridge from his belt pocket. “What did I tell you?  What did I say last night?” Her palm slammed against the grip’s base with slightly more force than necessary as if she was symbolically slapping Jacobi.  He winced sympathetically.  Immediately after reloading, she shot over his shoulder, taking out someone surprisingly close.  He heard the soldier fall with a grunt of pain.  He didn’t try to turn to look since he knew Maxwell would just spin him around again.  

“Uh…” he stammered.

“ _ What did I say last night, Daniel?!”  _ she roared.  

“You told me to plug my arm in,” he said weakly.  

“Did you?!  Did you plug in your arm?” she demanded.

“I can fire one-han – 5 o’clock!” 

She swung around, putting a bullet directly through the man’s Adam’s apple, “ _ Did.  You?”  _ she asked again, slowly, angrily.  

“No, I didn’t,” Jacobi admitted as Maxwell took out her frustration on a sniper above them.  

“No.  You.  Didn’t,” she said with Kepler’s careful and dangerous slowness. 

“Do we have to do this now?” Jacobi groaned.  “I can use –” 

“Yes, we do!” 

“But –”

“‘Definitely,’ you said.  ‘I’m doing it right now,’ you said.  I designed the damn thing, but did you listen to me?   _ Nooooo!   _ Of course not!  Because you’d rather have your stupid beauty sleep instead of a right arm that works!  You stupid, snoring, C4-snuggling  _ moron _ !”  Maxwell said, punctuating the sentence by shooting a female police officer attempting to bridge the same crack as the soldier a moment ago. 

“Okay!  Okay!  I get it!  You’re right!” Jacobi conceded.  

“Say it again!” Maxwell demanded, spinning around to face him again, the gun held precariously close to him.  

“ _ You’re right _ !” Jacobi groaned, “I should have listened to you!” 

“One more time!” 

“You, Alana Maxwell, are right, and I, Daniel Jacobi, am a poor fool for not listening to you!” Jacobi said.  Maxwell passed him back the pistol.  She unslung her Mercury.  

“Damn stra –“ But Maxwell was cut off part way through the second word.  Her brown eyes, already large, went wide and wet.  Blood spattered upward and outward.  There was a red hole in Maxwell’s side, blood gushed from the wound.  

She had been shot. 

_ “No!” _ Jacobi shouted.  

Neither of them saw the shooter until it was too late. She fell against Jacobi.  The Mercury dropped onto the pavement from her limp hands. She was shuddering against him, her breath fast and shallow, from either the pain or injury – Jacobi didn’t know which. Jacobi held her close.  He caught a glimpse of the shooter out of the corner of his eye and knew they had to move before they could finish the job.  

Carrying Maxwell as best he could, he found fortification where the shooter had only one way of getting at them.  One entrance, not the angle at which they had shot Maxwell.  Jacobi leaned her against the wall behind him.  If they were going to shoot her again, they’d have to get through him first.  The shooter fully revealed herself.  She was a woman of average height.  She had skin tanned to an almost amber color.  Her black hair was cut into a short pixie cut.  Her eyes were thinner-lidded than Jacobi’s and browner.  She wore a Captain’s uniform.  “Méi yòng cāo biān!” (“It’s no use hiding”) she said and Jacobi wanted to tell her whatever taunt she was using was lost on him.  He was essentially linguistically useless in the entire nation of China.  “Ray Salk, ní yé máshàng sǐ le!” (“Ray Salk, you’ll die soon too!”)

As she searched, Jacobi took aim.   _ “Keep talking, idiot,”  _ Jacobi thought,  _ “Keep yammering like a damn movie villain.”   _ She was wearing body armor, but armor was never perfect.  Her face was exposed.  Jacobi may not have been Maxwell, but he was still a Hell of a shot.  He only had one chance for this and he would make it count.  

One shot.  She collapsed to the ground, a bloody mess where her face had been.  Now he could give Maxwell his full attention.  He prayed to a God he’d long since stopped believing in that it wasn’t too late for her.  He couldn’t lose Maxwell.   _ He couldn’t lose her. _  He didn’t know how the world could keep turning if she was gone.  He holstered his pistol and pulled Maxwell out of the crack so he could better examine her.  He yanked open her jacket.  Blood gushed from her side and she was still breathing shallowly.  He let out a breath of relief.  

“I’m okay…” Maxwell hissed in a quiet voice almost lost in the chaos.  Her brown eyes fluttered opened.  She tried to sit up and couldn’t,  “I’m o— _ AH! _ ” it became a wordless shout of pain as she collapsed against the ground again, eyes squeezed shut.  Panting, she managed to get out the words, “I’m not quite okay.”

“We’re getting you out of this,” Jacobi assured her.  “You’ll be alright, I promise!”  

But he didn’t know if he could keep that promise.  They were shit out of luck.  One arm between the two of them.  Handgun against tanks.  In the middle of a goddamn war.  A war they made possible, and wouldn’t that be just the most poetic ending?  He latched his good hand over her side, applying pressure to desperately try to stem the bleeding.  Maxwell had been trying to do it herself but she didn’t have the energy to press down hard enough.

Guo’s voice rang out from nearby, “Jouguet!  Noether!”  Jacobi looked up at her.  She had dirt and ash staining her clothes and skin, a few bumps and scrapes, but for the most part looking none the worse for wear.  “We’re starting to –” she froze, her mouth was open and her gun hung at her side. 

“Help!” he shouted.  “Goddammit,  _ help!”  _

Guo raced over, her shoes thudding heavily on the sidewalk.  She let out a quiet “Cào tā mā!” even without a translation, Jacobi knew it was a curse.  She crouched down besides Maxwell.  “What happened?!” 

“She got shot, what the Hell does it look like?!” Jacobi demanded.  “Stop asking stupid questions and help me get her somewhere safe!” 

“What can I do?” Guo asked desperately. 

“Fucking  _ anything!”   _ Jacobi snapped, resisting the urge to let go of Maxwell’s side and smack Guo. There wasn’t time for her to be unsure. She had to be the soldier she wanted to be. “I’ve only got one arm right now, help me get her up!  Get bandages!  Get a medic!  Get her to real cover!  Don’t just sit there! Do  _ something!   _ Otherwise _ Jasmin is going to die _ !” 

When he said those words, something happened. Guo’s gaze became set.  “No,” she said firmly.  “Nobody else.  Nobody else dies.” 

Jacobi stared at her, “what?” 

“Don’t just sit there!  Do  _ something _ !” Guo repeated his words back at him.  She took the bandana off her head and passed it to him to put over Maxwell’s wound.  Jacobi was surprised she was able to get herself together and, after what their relationship had been to this point, surprised that she was willing to help them at all.  If Jacobi had been in Guo’s position, he wouldn’t have been so eager to assist. But then, not everyone was a monster.

Guo helped him get Maxwell carefully off the ground.  Jacobi pressed the bandana to Maxwell’s side, holding her close to him.  His right arm hung uselessly at his other side. He didn’t take it off. It wasn’t as if he could easily carry it right now. It was easier to deal with the deadweight. Maxwell leaned entirely against him, an arm around his back to support herself as best she could.  Guo provided excellent covering fire.  Jacobi was surprised how well she shot. Nothing touched them or even came close. Goddard Futuristics might have raised its eyebrows, but Jacobi didn’t think she was desperate or needy enough to sign on with Cutter.  

Jacobi looked down at Maxwell. Her eyes were squeezed closed, her expression pained.  He wasn’t sure how far the bullet had penetrated, but from the angle of the shot, it could have either torn apart her guts like a super-heated knife through butter, or it might have lodged in the little fat and muscle Maxwell’s abdomen had.  The wound meant either absolute, unstoppable death or a possibility of life with nothing but a bad scar. 

Jacobi was desperately hoping for the latter.  But it was only the possibility of safety.  Things could go wrong, very easily. Getting shot was never good. She could get an infection, go into shock, bleed out, go into organ failure from the bullet itself or blood loss… 

The Coalition was thankfully in retreat. That was what Guo had originally come to tell them.  Xie was climbing into a stolen vehicle.  She looked worse than Guo, more blood, more wounds, more mud.  “Nàměi! Xìnghǎo nǐ zài! Wǒmen deì-!” (“Namei!  Thank goodness you’re here!  We need to–!”) then she switched to English, “What happened to Noether?!” 

“Why do people keep asking that?!” Jacobi snapped. “Your goddamn war happened to her!  We need to get her out of here  _ now!   _ We need a doctor!” 

Guo said, “Liŭ xiānsheng yào bāng wǒmen ge máng ba?” (“Will Mr. Liu help us?”)

Xie nodded.  Then she said to Jacobi and Maxwell, “We’re taking our injured to a hospital.  We can either take you there –” 

“No hospitals,” Maxwell managed, her face was slick with sweat, her brown eyes were unfocused.  “No hospitals!” 

“Then we go to Liu Lijun,” Xie said.  

“Who?” Jacobi demanded.  

“A man I trust with my life.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably my favorite chapter. There might be a bit of a delay between this one and the next one since I have two people I am running the next chapter by.


	19. Ellen Hamilton & Nahele Oppenheimer; Mysteries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chahar Youyi Houqi, Inner Mongolia, China

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of Mandarin in this chapter, Matt is a goddamn super hero.

 

Xie Yuxia glanced in the rearview mirror at the strangers in the backseat. She drove the stolen van down miles of open highway, but they hadn’t been seen. These really, truly, were strangers. She realized that now more than ever before. She didn’t know what to think of them anymore.  

A lot had happened in four days. She lost so many in her inner circle. Hu Maihong, Zhang Donghui, Li Yongming, and perhaps most painfully, Huang Zhonghao. Her second-in-command. A man who tried so hard to get close to her, even as she pushed him away. She pushed him away like she did everyone else, and he kept trying.  He kept trying to be her friend until the end of his too short life. 

There was always the looming possibility of death.  But the Coalition usually worked behind the scenes, in the quiet and private, where the PLA couldn’t find them. There were deaths: three years ago they lost their leader, Yuxia’s mentor, Li Lingmei – the wife of Li Yongming, and Junjun’s mother. She was killed leaving her day job. One second alive and well, saying goodbye to one of the coworkers, stooping to unlock her car door when a police officer’s revolver “accidentally” discharged and hit her straight through the heart. Yongming never recovered from it.  And it reminded Yuxia why she couldn’t get too close to people. It reminded her that her way of living was easier. Back then she would have said  _ better _ .  

Yuxia thought she had everything figured out, up until four days ago. But now it seemed even she had more to learn. Everything was thrown off kilter. She took her hand off the wheel to nibble at her thumbnail. So much had changed.  

So much had changed.

When she first started working with “ Hypatia Technologies ” several months ago she thought, naïvély, that maybe there was a large and powerful group in the world that actually cared about the people, who helped “the Little Guy.” She could not believe how wrong she had been.  Emily Liston and Ray Salk...no...no, Jasmin Noether and Jay Jouguet...no, whoever they  _ really _ were, had painfully revealed the truth to her.  

After that, she thought she knew the sort of people the agents were. Heartless. Soulless.  Money hungry. So unfeeling they would kill without a thought. She thought they would even kill one another if the price was right.  She knew now that wasn’t true.  

She no longer knew who they were, what they were, or what they would do. They had just fought side-by-side and Not-Jasmin-Noether had saved her life. The one thing she knew for sure was that they wouldn’t hurt each other. They seemed to care deeply for one another, and the kindness they showed each other threw their other cruelties into stark relief. They abandoned the Coalition in the Yan Mountains to die, but they stuck together. Not-Jay-Jouguet provoked her into a physical fight at breakfast just yesterday, but he had sewn up his partner’s lip with obvious care. Not-Jasmin-Noether spoke glibly about their cruelties, but she showed so much concern for her partner. They coldly sold weapons to the most evil men in the world to use on thousands, even millions, of innocent people, but they adamantly refused to harm one another. Who were they? What were the self-proclaimed monsters in the backseat?  

Yuxia didn’t even know their real names. The man, tall and thin, dark-haired and –eyed; the woman, small and white with wide eyes the same brown as her hair. Those faces were all she really knew.  

Not-Jay-Jouguet held the makeshift bandage fashioned from Namei’s handkerchief tightly over the wound in his partner’s side. “You’re going to be okay.  You hear me, Alana? You’re going to be okay,” Not-Jay-Jouguet was muttering to her,  “Just hang on. You have to hang on.”  

Not-Jasmin-Noether, (Alana?), lay her head on his shoulder, her big eyes squeezed closed from the pain, sweat smearing cement dust on her bloodless face. She held his left hand to her side. His other hand hung uselessly on the other side. It was a prosthesis, something Xie had been surprised to note after Donghui knocked him out two nights ago. She had met many people with prosthetic limbs before, even a robotic limb once, but never anything so advanced, never anything that moved so smoothly and naturally. At dinner the night they first met, she didn’t even register that it wasn’t his real arm. It wasn’t until he was unconscious and she got a good look at it that she realized the limb wasn’t real. It was astonishing, possibly the most advanced robotic limb in the world.

“Daniel…it hurts…” Maybe-Alana managed thickly.  

“I know, but don’t you even think about giving up,” he said soothingly.

“You know I never… I never give up,” she said, giving him a weak smile. 

“I know,” he answered, “Don’t start now.” 

They cared about each other.  They truly did.  

Yuxia could no longer believe they were the monsters they claimed to be. But now they sat behind her, not lying, not pretending, not putting on a performance, and truly, caring for each other.

She had seen friendships like these, but had never been part of them. Yuxia was always on the outside. She had a hard time getting close to people. She kept everyone at a distance, even her former mentor, Lingmei, and her own second-in-command, Zhonghao. She tended to feel nervous around even the people. She thought it might be because she had been fighting most of the 25 years of her life. She thought it might be, in part, because she had lost too many people already to ever feel comfortable with  _ anyone _ , lest they be taken, too, and, in part, because she was afraid they would judge her for being bìanxìng, transgender.  

But something was changing. Something strange. In the wake of losing Zhonghao without ever really knowing him, and seeing those two monsters find support in each other’s arms, she wasn’t sure if being so isolated was actually the right thing to do. Guo Namei talked about little else but Zhonghao in the last few days. She talked about a man that Yuxia never really met. Another side of him that Yuxia wished she had known. The man who reached out to Yuxia, but she slapped his hand away.  A man who knew trivia, who played basketball when he was in school and was still proud of the championships he had won, who wanted to be a father (“Junjun does well with the Coalition... maybe it would be okay to bring a child into this life… do you think it would be okay?” he had said, but he was gay [Yuxia hadn’t even known that] and single and thus could not adopt), who loved to cook, who loved basketball, who was embarrassed by how excited he got about the things he liked, who was overly proud of his manners to the point that it was comedic.  Yuxia wished she’d known that man, even if she knew she would lose him. She knew the polite man, the fighter, the man with the immaculate calligraphy and endless notes, the Coalition member – and not the man.  

She had spent so long locking herself away from people, she no longer knew how to get close. She never really knew how to belong in scenes like the one in the backseat. She smoothed her nail against her teeth as she thought. There were people she cared about, people she loved dearly, but very few she actually knew much about personally, like her own mentee, Namei, and even fewer who knew anything about her at all.

She would have been afraid to comfort Maybe-Alana.  She would have done her best to treat her, to keep her calm and warm, but she would have been cautious. Regardless of how much she cared about the woman in the backseat, she would have resigned herself to the fact that she would probably die.  

Everyone died in the end and nothing could stop it.

 

***

 

The photo on her desk in Delberelt was Yuxia, or, rather, it was who she used to be.  

Xie Yuxia was born Xie Shuping in Guangdong. Assigned male at birth, but the boy the world told her she was was long gone. Sometimes she felt guilty about that. Sometimes she worried she hurt her long dead parents by shedding Shuping. She wondered if she should have forced herself to be her father’s son. When she looked at the picture on her desk, she felt some pang deep in her heart and she poured through all the feelings she grappled with for years, but in fast motion. Fear. Shame. Anger. Sorrow. Spite. Then, finally...the same conclusion. Acceptance. Power. Pride.  

Pride was essential. It had taken her years to figure it out. But she had found herself and found pride in herself. She would face the world and be who she was.

And Shuping wasn’t really  _ gone, _ he was still part of Yuxia. He was never really there, just a mask Yuxia had been forced to wear as a child. Or, maybe, the caterpillar that metamorphosed into Yuxia. He had always been her, beneath the surface.  

He existed, but he never really did. He was never what people thought. He wasn’t Shuping, and he wasn’t he. He was she and she was Yuxia. She was her parents’ daughter, even if they never knew it.

She never knew her mother. She died long before Yuxia could form a proper memory of her. Her father raised her. Yuxia loved her father, Xie Ruyang. He was one of the greatest men Yuxia had ever known and she firmly believed he was one of the greatest men she would  _ ever _ know  He worked as a nurse, the only man in such a role in his hospital. Maybe that was why he was willing to accept a son who wanted to wear skirts and grow his hair long and was, as so many neighbors whispered, effeminate. He, too, understood that gender was not so rigid as people said.

Shuping tried to hide the girl she really was, she only wore girl’s clothes at home. She tried to be like the boys in her class, she tried to be “he.” There was a time she was deeply ashamed of what she was. It took years to grow out of it, even when her father told her it was okay, some boys liked things that girls did. Yuxia wondered if he would have accepted that his son wasn’t a son at all, not a boy who liked things girls did, but a girl herself. She wanted to believe he would.  

Her father gave so much of his life to other people. He taught Yuxia from an early age the importance of that, of taking care of others, of keeping people safe. It was a lesson she never forgot.  

Shuping came to visit her father at the hospital. She remembered walking in on her father changing the bedsore bandages of a very old man who could no longer care for himself. He was a new patient and Shuping had no idea why he was in such terrible shape, why the bedsores on his back were so oozy and infected, but it didn’t matter. The effect would have been the same. She had been disgusted. She stumbled out of the room. When he was done, her father caught up to her where she sat, still slightly nauseated, on a chair by the nurse’s station.    

“Dēngdeng!  Ní méi shī ma?” he asked, using her childhood nickname. He crouched down beside her.  (“Are you okay?”)

“À... wǒ... bù zhī dào,” she said, looking up at him. “Nège xiānshèng zhéme le?” (“Yes... uh... I don’t know.” “What was wrong with that man?”)

“Mǎ yéye yǒu yā chuāng de kuìyáng, tā lái le zhèlǐ yīnwěi tā de kuìyáng gǎnrǎn le,” he explained. (Mr. Ma has pressure ulcers. He came here because they got infected.”)

“Tā chòu le. Wǒ de tǒu yūn le, shī zhēnde bù hǎo yì sì.” Shuping said, almost embarrassed. (“They smell. It made me feel dizzy and bad.”)

“Tā jiù hén lǎo, hén bìng le,” her father said, gently. He put his hand on her shoulder, rubbing it supportively. “Tā bù kéyǐ guǎn zìjì, dèi yǒu bié rén guǎn tā. Dèi yǒu rén ài tā yí diǎn.” （“He is very old and very sick. He can’t take care of himself anymore. He just needs someone else to take care of him. He needs a little love.”)

“Dàn shī tā chòu,” said Shuping, wrinkling her nose. (“But he’s gross.”)

Her father’s expression darkened. He retracted his hand and scolded her, “Nĭ zhéme kéyǐ zhèyāng shuō? Mă yéye hái shī ge rén, tā jiù shī bìng le! Nǐ bìng de shíhòu yé shī chòu, zāi liŭ nĭ de bítì.”  (“You should be ashamed of yourself, saying something like that! Mr. Ma is as much a person as you or me! But he’s gotten sick! You’re pretty gross when you have a cold and your nose is running.”)

“Duì bù qĭ! Wŏ búshì zhèyang de yìsì. Nè ge yéye bù shì chòu, dànshì... tā de... kuìyáng?” she said the word without confidence. “Shī tèbié chòu!” Shuping had said pathetically. (“I’m sorry, dad! I didn’t mean it that way! I didn’t mean that he was gross but... his... pressure ulcers? They were gross!”)

“Zhàogù bié rén búshī wánquán méi, dànshī wǒmen bìxū de. Dājiā dèi bāng ge máng zhàogù bié rén, zhàogù dājiā bù guǎn tāmen zhéme yàng, tāmen zhéme wén de.” She chuckled a little at “smell like” and her father laughed a little too, “Késhì à, Shùpíng. Késhì.” He got her to her feet and they walked down the hall together.  (“Caring for other people isn’t always glamorous, but it’s our obligation. It’s our job as human beings to take care of each other, to take care of everyone no matter what they look like, or even _smell_ like. It’s true, though, Shuping, it’s true.”)

“Wǒ dèi dājiā zhàogù ma?” she asked. (“I have to take care of everyone?”)

“Dājiā dèi bǎohù dājiā,” her father said, “Nǐ ké shì yībùfèn de dājiā, shì bù shì?” (“Everyone has to take care of everyone. You’re part of everyone, aren’t you?”)

“Shì!” Shuping said with confidence.  (“Yes!”)

“Nà, nǐ kàn dào shéme cuò de, nǐ shéme bú zuò...” He paused in front of another patient’s door. He frowned and removed the clipboard from the document holder and began reading a chart on it.  (“So, if you see something wrong and you don’t do something about it…”)

“Shéme le?” Shuping asked anxiously when her father trailed off.  (“What?  What happens?”)

He put the clipboard back on the door and looked down at his son. “Rénlèi jiū bìng le. Ránhòu, yŏu yī tiān, kenéng dōu sǐ le.” (“Humanity will get sick. And then, one day, it might die.”)

She still believed that. Especially after what happened to her father.  

For everything he did for others, for all of his dedication to humanity, he was robbed of his life, too. His life was cut short because those in charge cared more about keeping those under them in check than taking care of them.  

She was 12 when the outbreak hit. The government tried to cover it up. They kept it a secret from everyone for so long; not only their own people, but the World Health Organization. They let a Poison King spread his illness despite his doctor’s concerns. No one knew the truth.  Not even the people working in the hospitals nearby. It was 2002; her father contracted SARS that December while working at the hospital, and he was not lucky enough to recover.  

The death of Xie Ruyang changed her. It started the process of closing her up. Anyone could be taken from you. Anyone could be taken at any moment. And they could be taken no matter who they were, no matter how good, no matter how kind, no matter how little they deserved it. Nothing hurt more than losing someone you loved. So wasn’t it safer just to keep away from people? 

After her father died, she went to live with the Liu family. Liu Lijun had been a dear friend of her father’s father. She already knew him and liked him very much, even loved him like a grandfather.

Her father’s death was the start of everything changing. It was when she became who she was.  It was where everything she became started: her anxiety about getting too close to people, her understanding that the whole was more important than any single part, herself included. The birth of Yuxia as Yuxia came only a few years after the birth of her philosophy on life.  

The world changed. The world stayed the same. 

The government continued to be more concerned with watching them than caring for them. It cared more about itself, a loop of selfishness and contempt from those above. Everyone had an obligation to everyone else. Humanity was everyone’s cause. It shattered the whole to benefit some tiny pieces and vilify others. The government wanted everyone’s secrets, but kept their own. They  _ lied  _ and it harmed people. It killed her father. If he’d known what he was dealing with before he was sick, he would have survived. No one was allowed to have their own secrets, but the government was  _ nothing but _ secrets.  

Technology improved. Those at the top could watch those at the bottom even more closely. The top armed itself against them by keeping information, editing it, making it inoffensive and clean. They kept the people in line. They kept information secret, but kept tabs on their people. The world outside was modified. History was rewritten. Pain was invisible. And eyes were everywhere.  

That was why she joined the Coalition – to unite the whole, to free them, to protect them, to care for them the way her father had.  

And if it cost her her life...then that was that. There were worse ways to die. 

She had people she cared about, but she held them to the same obligation. She had to; otherwise losing them would hurt too much. And she would lose them. Even if they weren’t found, everyone would die eventually. She had to believe they understood what she did and that they kept her mantra. It was probably what made her so efficient. It was probably how, despite being so young, she became the leader of the Coalition when Lingmei was assassinated. But now she wasn’t so sure she was right. Now she kept thinking about Zhonghao and regretting that she never thought of him as anything but a coworker. She called him her friend, but had she ever really treated him like one? No. And even though he was gone, she wished she hadn’t missed out on actually being his friend. 

Her mantra was why she could not understand the man and woman in the backseat. They disregarded the whole. They refused to look at it. They tossed away humanity, and because of that, they sacrificed their own. They called themselves monsters, and if everything they said was true, they absolutely were.

But then…

They might not have cared about the whole, but they  _ did  _ care about their own small parts. In the grand scheme of things, in the face of all of humanity, they were nothing: infinitesimal, unknown. But they didn’t care about the whole. They didn’t care about the larger world. They cared about themselves and each other, and in their own lives there was nothing larger.  

They didn’t care about  _ everyone _ else, but they cared about  _ someone  _ else. It was so strange, the polar opposite of everything Yuxia thought she knew. Who were these people?  How could they be this way?  

Was all of it an act? Was everything she had seen before some mask? No. They wouldn’t have been able to work for whoever  Hypatia Technologies really was, arming the whole world regardless of their cause, if they were human. They had shown themselves to be unfeeling, uncaring, unflinching. Harbingers of the end of the world, as much on the side of the oppressor as the oppressed. 

But here they were, so different than the people she spoke to just yesterday, just a few hours ago, just before they climbed into the car. Yuxia felt as if someone had shone a spotlight on them when they had previously been hiding in the shadows. Now they were exposed and gave up trying to hide.  

She parked behind Liu’s hotel and rolled open the back door of the van. Not-Jay-Jouguet helped Not-Jasmin-Noether stagger out. She clung to him as if for her very life depended on it, and he held her perhaps even more dearly. Yuxia didn’t wait but ran into the building.  

“Yéye!” she shouted, running into the lobby ahead of them.  She skidded to a stop in front of the desk. “Yéye, xūyào ge fángjiān!” (“Grandfather! Grandfather, I need a room!”)

Lijun sat behind the counter listening to a news report on the radio.  There was no mention of the battle from what Yuxia could hear. They were discussing some exceptional Jīngjù performance.  Liu looked up at the sound of her voice. 

“Xingxing?” He asked.  That should have been both touching and slightly embarrassing. After finally coming to accept her as Yuxia, finally really understanding, Lijun dropped her real childhood nickname of Dengdeng, but, he said, he needed a replacement. So at the age of 21 she received a new childhood nickname. Even four years later it always gave her a warm feeling to be called Xingxing, even if it was embarrassing to be so infantilized. But now too much else was happening for her to be as touched as she otherwise would have. Her mind was still reeling from the battle, the loss, and the strangers. “Ní méi shī ma?” he continued. “Yălì shuō le zài diànshì shàng zāi shuō zài Dāibénèrdè yóu le ge dòuzhēng! Shuō le liānméng kāi le qiāng! Wŏ zāi tīng wúxiàndiàn dānshì tāmen méi shuō le qùbiè. Shénme fāshēngle?!” (“Are you alright? Yali said on TV they are saying there was an attack in Delberelt! They said the Coalition opened fire! I’ve been listening to the radio but they haven’t said anything else. What happened?!”)

Liu Lijun was an old man, but he refused to retire. He was strong for his age, sturdy from years of hardship. He was slow and his hands shook, but his eyes were sharp as they ever were, as was the mind behind them.  

He came around the other side of the counter, looking at Yuxia, taking in the dirt, sweat, and blood on her face and clothes. Her long skirt was torn. Her combat boots were stained with red. She had a cut above her eyebrow that had dripped a small river of blood down into her eye. Thankfully, the blood had stopped and it no longer stung. She had been knocked forward from the force of an explosion and banged her head on her shelter, cutting her head open. There was blood below her nose, that had been from a close combat encounter in which a man had slammed his fist into her face. But before he could put his knife in her, she had done the same to him. She killed him with a grenade as she fled. There dirt smeared across her face.  Her hair was in disarray and clung to the sweat on her forehead. With a shivering hand, Lijun brushed away Yuxia’s hair to see the wound above her brow.  

“Bĭ tāmen shuō de chāo fùzá.” Yuxia shook her head and took his hand in both of hers. “Wŏ méi shījiān shuōmíng! Zhège nǚrén shòushāng le!” Behind her the two Americans staggered in.  She glanced back.  Not-Jay-Jouguet and Not-Jasmin-Noether held desperately to each other and looked hopefully at Lijun. (“It’s far, far more complicated than they say. I can’t explain it now! This woman is injured!”)

“Emily Liston and Ray Salk?” he asked in surprise.

“Ellen Hamilton and Nahele Oppenheimer,” Not-Jay-Jouguet corrected him. More fake names, new aliases. She wondered if the two names she heard in the car were even the real ones.  Did Alana and Daniel really exist?  

Lijun looked from him to the injured woman to Xie.

“Wǒ qiú nǐ, Yéye, bāng wǒ jiū tā,” she begged.  (“Please, Grandfather, help me save this woman’s life.”)

“Hăo à,” Lijun nodded. (“Of course.”)

 

***

  
  


Lijun gave Now-Ellen-Hamilton a sedative. She choked it down dry.  

Liu Lijun knew what he was doing. He had been a medic in Mao’s army decades ago when he was a young man. His first wife had been lost in the Famine a decade later. His only son was murdered at age 17 during the Red Guard infighting of the Cultural Revolution. Lijun hadn’t trusted the government since, even now, decades after the fall of the Gang of Four.  

He and Yali, his second wife, had a daughter, Yuyin. Yuyin was the closest thing Yuxia had to a best friend. When they were younger, Yuyin in her twenties and Yuxia in her teens, she was the first person Yuxia told she was transgender, when she first learned what the word meant and everything,  _ everything,  _ started to make sense. And Yuyin, after a brief period of confusion, accepted her.  Yuxia went from brother to sister. Yuyin was also the one who fought hardest for Yuxia. She helped Lijun and Yali accept their adopted daughter.  

It was a hard road, but she also knew that neither of them ever stopped loving her. It was heartbreakingly difficult to face their dismay and disapproval. She would never forget the time Lijun, when he didn’t know she could hear him, said that he didn’t want to lose another son. It had helped push Yuxia further into the armor she was crafting for herself, the one she lived in now, the one that kept the rest of the world from getting too close. Now, more than a decade later, Lijun was on her side. Still often confused, still not as quick as Yuyin, but trying. 

Yuyin wasn’t there that day and Yuxia was glad for that. It made all this at least slightly less complicated with fewer people to explain it to. She loved Yuyin very much, but Yuyin did not necessarily agree with Yuxia’s actions. She was her closest ally in some ways, but she disapproved of the violence that Yuxia thought was often the solution.  

Lijun still had up-to-date medical supplies at all times, and sometimes Yuxia wondered if he did so only for her and the Coalition. His old hands shook too much to do the procedure himself, but he was able to give Yuxia, Namei, and Now-Nahele-Oppenheimer directions. They took Now-Ellen-Hamilton to one of the bottom-floor rooms, splitting her weight between Namei and Now-Oppenheimer.  They lay her out on the bed.  

“Wŏ dèi kān shāngkǒu,” he said. They peeled away the bloody shirt and bandana. Now-Oppenheimer removed the dead weight of the prosthesis and left it in the chair by the window and came to Now-Hamilton’s bedside. (“I need to see the wound.”)

He watched Lijun carefully, with a distrustful eye. “Tell him not to do anything stupid,” said Now-Oppenheimer rudely, who had already learned that Lijun didn’t speak English. However, Lijun  _ understood  _ English and he gave a shocked look to Yuxia.  

“He understands English, and watch your damn mouth,” said Yuxia coldly. 

“Don’t try to yank the bullet out unless you have to, got it?!” Now-Oppenheimer said directly to Lijun, ignoring Yuxia.  His tone changed, became anxious, “Be careful… just be careful.” He swallowed and said in a much more determined steady tone, “And tell me what to do.”  

Lijun’s expression changed too. He studied Now-Oppenheimer for a long moment. Now-Oppenheimer’s expression didn’t change, the same scowling determination. Then Lijun nodded. “Gēn tā shuō wŏ zhīdào tā duōme yánzhòng de shíhou wŏ yŏu ge tā de xùnlìng.” (“Tell him that I’ll have instructions for him once I know how bad it is.”)

“He’ll tell you what to do once he knows how bad it is,” Yuxia told Now-Oppenheimer.

They got to work. Lijun examined the wound and came to the same diagnosis as Now-Oppenheimer. With so few supplies, it was safer to leave the bullet in her and hope it didn’t shift, since it was, by the looks of it, precariously close to a kidney.  To try to take it out would cost her more blood, dirtying the wound or making a new one. It risked pushing the bullet deeper into her. Without an actual surgeon, Lijun opted not to take the risk. Instead, they cleared the wound of debris, sewed it closed, and bandaged it up.  

Now-Oppenheimer helped however he could and was otherwise extremely annoying. Whenever someone took what he determined was too long, he tried to speed up the process.  He either did it himself (even one-handed, she realized he was very good at negotiating the world with only one arm) or shouted at the person he perceived was wasting time. More than once Namei threatened to kill him to shut him up, but it didn’t do much good.  

Between the four of them, they pulled Now-Ellen-Hamilton out of danger.  

The bullet was deep in her muscle, but she would be okay until she could get to a proper doctor she trusted. Unless the bullet shifted.  

Namei refused to accept that possibility. “Wŏmen dài le tā nème yuán,” Namei said with bitter tears in her eyes, “Tā bù kéyĭ sĭ de.” (“We’ve gotten her this far, she can’t die now.”)

“Nàméi…” said Yuxia slowly. She knew it wasn’t really about Now-Hamilton. She knew it was about Maihong, Donghui, and, especially, Zhonghao. Death was never fair. The universe was never fair. That was why people had to be. “Méi shénme hái kéyĭ zuò.”  (“Namei... There’s nothing more we can do.”)

Now-Oppenheimer said nothing for once. He didn’t know what they were saying, but he didn’t offer any of his own thoughts either. He sat beside Now-Hamilton’s bed, watching without actually seeming to see. He wasn’t crying, but he didn’t say a word, and there was genuine fear in his eyes.  

“Wŏmen dǎ le nème xīnkǔ,” breathed Namei. “Zhōnghāo gēge, Dōnghuì shūshu, Màihōng shūshu... tāmen nème xīnkǔ le.” (“We fought so hard. Big Brother Zhonghao, Uncle Donghui, and Uncle Maihong... they fought so hard.”)

“Tāmen zhīdào le kénéng sĭ le. Nĭ zhīdào le, Nàméi. Shī bù shī?” asked Yuxia. (“They knew what could happen. You knew it could happen, Namei. Didn’t you?”)

“À...” she answered. “Wŏ jiūshī...” (“Yes… I just…”)

“Jiūshī méi xiāngzhe kénéng fāxiàn,” Yuxia provided.  (“You just didn’t think it would.”)

The other woman nodded, biting her lip. “Wŏ méi xiāngzhe. Wŏ zhīdào le kenéng fāxiàn, dānshī... Tāmen...” she trailed off, putting her hand over her mouth, trying to stop herself from crying.  Yuxia’s heart stung. She thought she may have been wrong. Maybe no one else thought like she did. Maybe she was wrong to expect people to be so willing to throw themselves away for the sake of the whole. “Tāmen bù zhí de sĭ le. Tāmen sĭ le, wŏ méi shénme kéyĭ zuò de xiū zhè. Tāmen bŭ zài. Tāmen bŭ zài, wŏ bù huì kān dào tāmen le.”  (“I didn’t expect it. I knew it could happen but then...then they… They didn’t deserve to die. They shouldn’t have died and there’s nothing I can do to fix it. They’re gone. They’re gone and I’ll never see them again.”)

Yuxia reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Tāmen hén yǒnggǎn de.” (“They were very brave.”)

“Dànshī hái shī sĭ le,” whispered Namei. (“But they’re still dead.”)

“À,” she said sadly, “Késhī. Nĭ hái niánqīng. Nĭ hái bī wǒmen yī bān de niánqīng. Rúguǒ nĭ yǎo zǒu, wǒ kéyĭ bāng nĭ zhǎodào ge ānquān de fángzi...” (“Yeah. That’s true. You’re still young. Younger even than most of us. If you want to leave, I can find you a safe house…”)

“Bù yào!” said Namei fiercely. She had tears in her eyes, but when she looked up at Yuxia, her bloodless face was resolute. “Bù shī duì de shíjiān! Zhège fāshēng de yihòu! Wŏ jiù gèng bāng nĭmen dă!” (“No! Not now! After what happened! I’m going to help fight harder!”)

Yuxia felt a welling of pride. Namei was so brave. So good. It touched Yuxia to the core, cutting through the armor, stabbing through the crack Zhonghao’s death had made. She hugged the younger woman close to her for the first time. “Nĭ yéshi yǒnggǎn. Zhōnghāo huì wèi nĭ zìháo... Wǒ yé wèi nĭ fēicháng zìháo.” (“You’re very brave, too. Zhonghao would be proud of you... and I’m very proud of you.”)

 

***

 

Lijun pulled Yuxia aside as she and Namei sat drinking cups of hot tea with Yali, listening to the news report on Delberelt, gleaning what they could and hoping it was the truth. Now-Oppenheimer and Now-Hamilton remained in their room, she unconscious and he unwilling to leave her side.  

“Zhéme le?” Yuxia asked at the look on her surrogate grandfather’s face. (“What’s wrong?”)

“Tāmen shī shúi?” he asked with extreme seriousness.  (“Who are they?”)

“Shúi ya?” (“Who?”)

“Nàge měiguórén, dāngrán! Tāmen shī nǎlǐ lǎi de? Nĭ zhéme rènshī tāmen? Tāmen gēn Dāibénèrdè yŏu shéme guānxì?” he demanded. He pointed to the closed door, voice full of concern. “Nàge nán zhīdào tài duō gēn zhìliáo qiāng shāng de guānxì! Wŏ shénme méi gēn tā shuō! Tā zhīdào de bù bă zǐdàn ná qù lái. Yŏu shìbīng bù zhī dào zhéme ānpāi!”  His voice was a low hiss.  (“The Americans, of course!  Where did they come from?  How do you know them?  What did they have to do with Delberelt? That man knew too much about treating gunshot wounds even before I said a  _ word _ about it! He knew not to take the bullet out. There are  _ soldiers _ who haven’t known that!”)

Yuxia sighed, “Qǐng zuò xiàlái, yéye, wŏ gēn nĭ dōu shuo.”  (“Please sit down, grandfather, I’ll tell you everything I can.”)

And she did.  

She told him that Li Yongming had turned on them. She told him that Li Haojun was almost certainly now telling the army everything he knew to take them down. She told him that the Americans worked for the company that armed the Coalition, leaving out both the name of the company and what armaments they’d been given.  Nor did she mention their betrayal or that two days ago she had them both at gunpoint and she was only protecting them because she kept her word. 

“Nĭ xìnrèn tāmen ma?” he asked anxiously. (“Do you trust them?”)

“Dāngrán bù xìnrèn,” laughed Yuxia. “Wŏ jiù xìnrèn tāmen zuò yíge shìqìng.” (“No, of course not. I only trust them to do one thing.”)

“Nà shī shénme?” (“Which is?”)

“Bǎohù lìng yīgè rén.” said Yuxia.  (“Protect each other.”)

“Tāmen tīng nĭ de huà ma?! Nĭ quèdìng tāmen bù bèipàn nĭ ma?” demanded Lijun. （”And you think they will listen to you?!  That they won’t betray you?”)

“Wŏmen tóngyì le. Zhìjīn tāmen méi bèipàn wŏ. Tāmen xiànzài méi shénme xuǎnzé le.” She shrugged. “Tāmen bù huì shénme zuò de.” (“I have a deal with them. So far, they haven’t betrayed me. They don’t have much of a choice now. There’s not much either of them can do like this.”)

“Yŭxiā,” he caught her by the arm, “Nĭ dèi xiǎoxīn. Shī fēicháng jiǎndān sĭ le.” (“You need to be careful. It’s very easy to die.”)

“Wŏ zhī dào,” she said with a mirthless smile. (“I know.”)

“Dànshì nǐ bù zàihū.” the old man replied. (“But you don’t care.”)

“Yŏu shìqìng bǐ wǒ gèng zhòngyào.” she answered. (“There are things more important than me.”)

“Nà bù gēn dàjiā tóngyì. Bùlùn nǐ shī wŏ de érzi hăishī wŏ de nǚér, wŏ bù yào shīqù nǐ.” (“Not to everyone.  Whether you’re my son or my daughter, I can’t lose you.”)

“Qǐng bù dānxīn,” she said. “Wŏ chéngnuò wŏ hái huì, wŏ jiù huí jiā.” (“Don’t worry, please. I promise that as long as I can, I will always come home.”)

She separated from Lijun decided to check on the two agents. She didn’t knock. Stepping inside, Yuxia noted that Now-Oppenheimer hadn’t moved. His tall form was bent over, his tired eyes were unblinking. A huge bruise was blossoming across the left side of his face, quickly blackening at his cheek, spreading outward like a plague.  At the epicenter was the ugly, open gash. Yuxia crossed the room to his side.  As she walked past the open first aid kit, she removed a few alcohol swabs and butterfly bandages.  

“Here.” She passed them to him.

He looked up at her, then down at the supplies.  He grabbed them and considered his reflection in the glass of the window.  He tore open the swab with his teeth, made a face at the taste, scrubbed the wound, cursing from the shock of pain. He considered the butterfly bandages, opened one between his teeth, tried – and failed – to close the wound completely with one hand.

“Without calling me an American dog or something, you mind helping me with this?” he asked.

“I have never called you that,” Yuxia said in annoyance, taking the bandages from him.

“Then how little I care about your opinion should be obvious,” he said dryly.

She felt a swelling of anger. He reminded her he was still the same monster as before. She glared at him and pinched his bruised cheek closed with perhaps more force than was strictly necessary.

“Ow!” he shouted, then added in a grumble, “I guess I asked for that…”

“I was actually going to apologize before you started this,” she said.

“You still could,” he pointed out.

“You need to earn it,” she said. After a pause she asked what she had been wondering for days now.  “What happened to your arm?” 

He glanced down at the arm on the cushion beside him. “It ran out of juice. And the charger got ruined in your damn war.” 

“I meant the real one,” she said. She put the first bandage on the top of his wound and worked down. 

“Lost it,” he answered briefly.

“On the job?” Yuxia asked, adding the second bandage.  

“It's dangerous out there,” he said leaning back, neither confirming nor denying her answer as she added the third. 

“Was she there?” Yuxia nodded towards the woman in the bed. Yuxia finished with the fourth and final bandage. He traced the line of them with two fingers.  

“Yeah.” Now-Oppenheimer looked over at Now-Hamilton with a slight smile. “She made me the new one.”

“That’s amazing,” said Yuxia, raising her eyebrows.

“She can do just about anything,” he answered, with a certain awe in his voice. He looked at the prone woman affectionately. “I owe her everything.” He wore an expression of permeating warmth and fondness unsuitable for a self-proclaimed monster.

“What is she to you?” she asked. Whatever she was, she meant everything to him, and Yuxia felt a pang of jealousy deep in her gut. Not because she wanted the attention of either of these monsters, but because whatever they had could touch even  _ their _ callused hearts.  

She should have opened up more to Zhonghao when he tried to spend time with her. She should have become his friend when she had the chance. She should reach out to Namei before Namei started to build her own armor, before either of them lost someone else, before they became heartless themselves.  

“What?”  Now-Oppenheimer looked back at Yuxia, thick eyebrows furrowed.

“Is she your lover?” Yuxia asked. “Your wife?” 

He laughed incredulously, as if Yuxia had told a poor joke, “Are you serious? No.”  

“Then, what is she?”

He answered without a thought, “My best friend.”

  
  


***

 

She was still puzzling those words over and over again in her head as she went back into the hall. Downstairs, Namei was alone watching the news as it sprayed lies about the battle. Yuxia came and sat down beside her on the couch. Namei wore a spare outfit of Yuyin’s, a pretty blouse and trousers that Namei would have never chosen for herself. She looked so out of place. So afraid.  

“Mèimèi, nĭ yào liáotiān ma?” asked Yuxia sitting down next to Namei. (“Little sister, do you want to talk?”)

The younger woman looked up in surprise. “Liáotiān? Liáo shénme?” (“Talk?  About what?”)

She shrugged. “Dōu shuō ba. Jīntiān de shìqìng. Sàkè hé Lísìdùn. Zhōnghāo. Hāojūn. Shénme dōu shuō.” (“Anything.  Today.  Salk and Liston.  Zhonghao.  Haojun.  Anything at all…”)

Namei looked down and scrubbed her eyes on the back of her hand. “À... Wŏ xiǎng shī ge hǎo zhǔyì.”  (“Yes... I think I’d like that.”)  
  



	20. Ellen Hamilton & Nahele Oppenheimer; Given One Last Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chahar Youyi Houqi, Inner Mongolia, China

It took longer for Maxwell to wake up than Jacobi expected.  It was one of the hardest afternoons of his life. He spent most of it just waiting.  At one point Xie brought him tea, but he didn’t acknowledge her and the tea now sat cold on the dresser.  When Maxwell finally came to, he had been waiting for hours, feeling every damn minute of them.  He was about to ask Liu if everything was normal when Maxwell finally stirred in bed.  She let out a low groan and a hiss of pain.  Her eyes slowly opened, blinked.  She saw Jacobi and gave him a weak smile.  

“Oh, thank God,” Jacobi muttered, letting out a breath he felt he’d been holding since she was shot.  He was sitting in a chair at her bedside between bed and window.  As she woke he felt a tenseness dissipate, evaporate from him and he went slack in his chair.

“Hi,” said Maxwell in a hoarse, dry voice.

“Hi yourself,” Jacobi answered.   “Don’t ever do that again.”

“I’ll try not to.  Where are we?” she asked weakly, looking around the small room.

“A hotel in Chahar Youyi Houqi,” he answered.

“Where?”

“Exactly,” Jacobi said.  “Xie and Guo got us here, remember?”

“Yeah, vaguely.  I remember the car ride. Ow…” She tried to sit up, then stopped.  “Am I…okay?” she asked somewhat nervously.  

Jacobi smiled, hopefully reassuringly.  “You’re okay,” he promised her softly.  “You scared the crap out of me though.”

“Good,” she muttered, her head hitting the pillow.  “Payback for Colombia.”

“If that’s how you felt that night, I’m sorry for almost getting eaten by a tiger.” He got up and helped her sit against the pillows.

“You should be,” but she sounded sentimental.  She lifted her borrowed white shirt and examined the bandage on her side.  She was clearly resisting the urge to check the wound beneath.  “Did you patch me up?”

“I couldn’t really do much,” he said apologetically, “but Liu, the guy who runs this place, knew what he was doing.”

“Is he a doctor?” Maxwell asked.

“I have no idea.  He doesn’t speak any English.  Xie told me he used to be a medic, but that could mean anything,” he heaved a shrug.

“Did you guys get the bullet out?”

“Nah,” Jacobi answered. “It’s wedged in there real good.  The old guy didn’t want to risk it while we’re in the ass-end of nowhere.”

Maxwell looked concerned and eyed her side suspiciously.  “Oh…”

“It’s okay,” Jacobi said reassuringly, “Don’t worry about it.  I’ve got half of one lodged in a rib from a mission with Major Kepler the year before you joined up.  It’s never given me any trouble.”  He indicated its general location through his shirt. Even looking at his bare skin you couldn’t tell there was anything unusual about that particular scar, a small pit on the right side of his chest, below one of the MIT burns. Just another scar among the dozens Jacobi already had, but he could feel the fragment physically when he pressed down on the site.

“Did he kiss it and make it better?” Maxwell asked with a smirk.  She tried to prop herself fully upright on the pillows; another pained sound escaped her lips.  

“See, being a jackass hurts,” Jacobi said, but he helped reposition her.

“Thanks,” she muttered.  

“No problem,” Jacobi replied.

“What will they do with mine?” Maxwell asked.

Jacobi scowled, thinking, “I think that depends.  Once we get you back to Goddard, they’ll probably send you to medical to get an x-ray. Then from there they’ll decide whether or not they want to yank it out.  If they do, then they do.  If not, it’ll stay in there.”  

“Yank it out,” Maxwell muttered with a smirk.

“Cut it out.  Surgically.  Remove it.  However you’re supposed to say it.”

“Where is it, exactly?” Maxwell asked, prodding her side and groaning, her eyes squeezing shut against the pain.  

“What part of you thought that was a good idea?” Jacobi asked.  He sighed.  “It’s in the muscle.  It’s pretty close to your kidney, but you should be okay for now.”  But he knew it might not stay that way. The bullet could shift in the tissue.  

He was lucky with his.  It was a fragment of a bullet from another shot, a ricochet that had lost a lot of its momentum already.  It lodged itself in bone and was pretty firmly in place.  The wound had been clean and quick. The decision was not to risk weakening the bone or causing the bullet to further break apart.  Eventually his rib would just grow around it.  

Maxwell’s was far more precarious. If the bullet shifted, it could easily end up in her kidney. Very easily.  Proximity was the primary reason they hadn’t pulled it out.  Hopefully, they could get back to the States before that happened.  Hopefully, it wouldn’t happen at all.  She might be able to survive with one kidney but the bullet would then be carving up her insides, making meat out of her abdominal muscles, causing bleeding, potentially irreparable damage, she could go into renal failure, it could cause other organs to fail from the blood loss, or else it could do that last much more directly and go from the kidney to the other organs beyond.  

“So you’re walking around with a bullet in you?” Maxwell asked.

“Yeah,” Jacobi shrugged. “I’m pretty badass.”

She laughed, “ _We’re_ pretty badass.  Badass jackasses.”

“Badass jackasses,” Jacobi corrected himself.  “Luckily we don’t need to get on a commercial flight. We’d set off the metal detector.”

“Did that happen to you?”

“Once, but they didn’t check me.  Pretending to be a veteran fixed that.”

“How?” Maxwell asked.

“It was on a mission.  Me and the Major were undercover and we had to get through this security checkpoint.  It was Kepler’s idea to say we were in the Armed Forces. So I got this card that says I served in the Air Force and have shrapnel in me from Iraq.” Jacobi had liked that.  Without even asking, Major Kepler knew Jacobi would appreciate being a fake Air Force vet rather than a fake Army vet.  It had sent a momentary warmth through him that his CO knew him that well.  “You can use that card to get discounts in like a million places. We’ll get you one of them when we get back to the States. It’ll help you get closer to your Tesla.”

“Saving fifty cents on coffee is hardly going to pay for an electric car,” Maxwell pointed out.

“You don’t want to cheat people into giving you discounts?” Jacobi asked, eyebrows raised.  It had been a good deal in some places.  He hadn’t been forced through a metal detector in a while, but whenever he did, he abused the Hell out of the VIC until it was taken away again.  

“Of course I do!”  Maxwell said incredulously.  “I’m just saying it won’t pay for my car.”  

“Good, I was worried about you for a second,” Jacobi said.

She glanced over at the clock.  “We’re running out of time before extraction,” she said in a hushed whisper, as if she was afraid of making the time jump forward.

Jacobi sighed glancing at the glowing numbers.  Seventeen hours left.  “I know.  Tomorrow morning.  Or we’re walking home.  But we’re almost there.”

Maxwell sighed, “Think we can make it?”

“Do we have a choice?” Jacobi asked.

“Nope,” Maxwell answered.

“Then we have to, don’t we?”

Maxwell smiled, “We’ll make it.”

 

***

 

The next morning, Xie described the route to the Mongolian border.  It was a straight shot down G208, just keep driving for 270-ish kilometers.  She also gave them a 10-year-old Changan Ford.  It had belonged to Zhang, so the owner obviously wasn’t expecting it back.  

Jacobi and Maxwell limped out into the graying predawn.  Maxwell had her arm slung around Jacobi’s shoulder, Jacobi hunched to her level.  His mechanical arm was attached but his hand rested in his pocket, useless as a doll’s arm. His left eye had swelled shut overnight, a deep black bruise covering half his face.  It was sore and aching, but so was everything else.  His gut was bruised.  The shrinking goose egg still ached.  He _hurt_ all over.  Glancing at Maxwell he could tell she felt the same way.  He could see the swelling from her pistol whipping under her hair, barely visible through the curls.

“You could stay,” Xie said behind them.  Her tone was gentle, hopeful, kinder than Jacobi was used to coming from her.  It was similar to the voice she used yesterday when she came in to apologize and Jacobi had ruined it. Maxwell and Jacobi paused and looked back at her.  She was standing in the hotel’s back door.  

“What?” Maxwell asked.

“You could stay here with us.  Join the Coalition.  You two could keep using your skills for good.  You aren’t what you say you are. You aren’t monsters.  I think you are only pretending.  I think you’ve fooled everyone.  I think you’ve even fooled yourselves.  I’ve seen monsters.  Monsters don’t care like you two do.  Monsters don’t have best friends.  If you put half as much dedication to our cause as you do to each other, we would win.  We would win _quickly_.  You could make up for all the bad you’ve done.  You could start again.  You could stop being what you are and become something else.  You could be heroes.”

Slowly Jacobi and Maxwell looked from the woman in the doorway to each other.  Their looks of surprise melted away.  Maxwell’s face broke into a grin.  Jacobi snorted.  In unison they started to laugh, nearly falling over in hysterics.

“Thanks, I needed that,” Jacobi said with a satisfied sigh.  He cleared his throat and said, “No.  Oh God, no.”  

“We’re good,” Maxwell added.

“Suuuuper good,” Jacobi clarified.  

“We’ll _definitely_ pass.”

“Good luck with your whole…rebellion thing.”

“May the Force be with you,” Maxwell added.

“Really?” Jacobi chuckled as they turned away again.  Xie cursed behind them, but neither Jacobi nor Maxwell looked back at her.  He didn’t know how Xie could have thought, after all they’d been through, that she could appeal to their sense of humanity.  That ship had sailed eons ago.  They really _were_ citizens of the end of the world.

“I don’t know!  What else do you say to a rebellion?” Maxwell asked.

“Anything else,” Jacobi said.

“I’m driving.”  Maxwell told Jacobi as they approached the car.  She pulled the keys from her coat pocket.  

“You?!” Jacobi said incredulously, “You’ve been shot!”

“And you only have one arm,” Maxwell pointed out.

“Flip a coin for it?” Jacobi asked.

“No, I’m driving,” Maxwell pushed.

“Flip a coin for it,” he said with authority.  “Or we could race to the driver’s seat.”

Maxwell reached up and poked him on the bruised cheek, “I’m driving.”

She kept applying pressure until he conceded, “Ow! _Ow!  Fine!_  You’re driving!”  She removed her finger from his cheek.  They climbed into the truck both wincing and staggering.

And they set off, kicking up dirt behind them. Jacobi glanced back at Chahar Youyi Houqi in the rear view mirror as the city shrank behind them.  Nothing but desert and grasslands ahead.  He slumped back in his seat. “I lost my book,” he grumbled.

“You’ll be fine,” Maxwell assured him.

 

***

 

It was very easy to break the speed limit on roads like this and Maxwell had no qualms with doing so.  The endless stretches of Gobi desert grew around them on either side.  Jacobi snoozed on and off. Maxwell repeatedly woke him up to make sure she didn’t drift off, too.   They reached Erenhot and its dinosaur statues.  The weirdest made both Jacobi and Maxwell stare in silence for a few seconds.  Two dinosaurs open-mouth kissing, their long necks forming an arc over the road.  “I’m pretty sure this is what the road to Hell looks like,” Jacobi said.  His one unbruised eye looked up at the awkwardly tonguing sauropods.

“Who looked at a brontosaurus and decided they wanted to see two of them make out?” Maxwell asked, making a face.

“Two people.  The guy who designed the statue and the guy who let him build it here.  You know in the States they’d be doing something badass, like beating each other to death with their necks.”  

“Well, we’re not in America.  And I guess we’re just lucky they didn’t take the fetish further,” Maxwell grimaced.

“Why did you have to put that image in my head?!” Jacobi groaned.  

“If I have to imagine it, I’m sharing the pain.”  

“Thanks for that.”

“What are best friends for?” Maxwell smirked.

 


	21. Elizabeth Banting & Mattan Best; Fire and Brimstone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erenhot, Inner Mongolia, China

 

He hadn’t slept much the night before, too worried about Maxwell to let himself drift off for long.  Every time she made a noise – and often when she didn’t – he had to make sure she was okay.  That was why he kept drifting off in the passenger’s seat of the old Changan Ford.  He was starting to fall asleep in earnest when Maxwell hit him in the shoulder and jarred him awake.  “Ow, what now?”  Wide awake, he looked around for whatever new disaster had befallen them.  

A long line of unmoving cars and trucks stretched out ahead of them, leading up to a cement structure spanning the highway.  The border.  It was busier than Jacobi was expecting.  He quickly realized why.  Of course, they were trying to stop members of the Coalition from fleeing.

“Border patrol,” Maxwell hissed.  “They must be looking for people connected to the Coalition.”

Armed soldiers were peeking into car windows as they approached the border.  “Shit,” Jacobi cursed under his breath.

There were posters stuck to the chain link fence running alongside them.  Jacobi took his cracked glasses from his coat pocket so he could see them better.  There were several different versions, each listing different members.  Guo Namei’s yearbook photo.  Xie Yuxia shouting from a podium.  Zhang Donghui cut out of a crowd.  What looked like Wang Mingxi’s headshot.  At least a half-dozen other members.  Huang Zhonghao, who shared a poster with Xie, and Hu Maihong next to Zhang, were both crossed out with a red marker.  And on a wanted poster all their own were the new American members, their names written out in Roman characters: “Emily Liston” and “Ray Salk.”  Thankfully, the photos weren’t very good.  They had definitely been taken during their escape from the base in Hebei.  The pictures were blurry.  Maxwell was in profile.  Jacobi had a gun partially blocking his face.  That might save them.  Maybe.  

“With luck, between the sucky pictures and the fact we’re so bruised, we’ll look a little less like us…” Maxwell said following his gaze.  

“The bruises make us look a Hell of a lot more conspicuous, though.  Two Americans with suspect wounds trying to flee the country?” Jacobi asked.  “I’d detain us on principle.”

“Did you save any IDs?” Maxwell asked.  “Ellen Hamilton and Nahele Oppenheimer?”

“No, I lost those a while ago.  I just remembered the names.  I don’t know if I even said ‘Nahele’ right.”  

“You didn’t, but no one noticed,” Maxwell told him.  “Do we have _anything_?” She looked at him pleadingly.  

“Maybe.  Hang on.  I definitely saved at least two when my bag got crushed.”  And, hopefully, he hadn’t lost them in the fight.  He probed his left pocket.  No.  Right?  Nothing but his useless hand.   Inside pocket?  Yes. With a sigh of relief he pulled out the final two passports.  He glanced over Maxwell’s. Elizabeth Banting. Dover, Delaware.  24.  No stitches.  “Elizabeth Banting,” he said, passing it to her.  

Maxwell checked it before slipping it into the pocket of her dirty pants.  Jacobi glanced over his.  “And Mattan Best.”  Kansas City, Missouri.  31.  Face not half bruise.  

“We need to explain why we look like this,” Maxwell said, as if she could read his mind.  

“And we need to explain what we’re doing here,” Jacobi added.

He looked up at Maxwell.  She was watching the border patrol come closer, big brown eyes locked unblinkingly on their approach.  

“Any ideas?” Jacobi said uselessly.  His brain felt like mush.

“Not yet.  Anything in the glove compartment?” Maxwell asked hopefully, remaining stock-still.  

“Uh…” Jacobi cracked it open.  A heavy black book fell out onto his lap.  He frowned, then cursed at the wave of pain the expression brought to his bruised face.  It was a Chinese language version of the Bible.  “Bible?” he said, brandishing it at her.  

Maxwell’s anxious look immediately dissipated.  A relieved smile crossed her features as best it could with a swollen lip that didn’t easily twist upwards.  “Good.”

“What?”  Jacobi asked, “Why?” He weighed the book in his hand.  She could probably knock someone out with it, but it wouldn’t be easy.  And what would they do after that?  There was a barrier keeping them from Mongolia beyond and these guys were armed and working in pairs.

“We’re going to pretend to be missionaries,” Maxwell said confidently.

“Are you kidding?” Jacobi asked flatly.

“No.”

“No, really, you’re kidding, right?” Jacobi repeated.

“Did you forget I’m a pastor’s daughter?” Maxwell asked.  

“No, but your dad’s a crazy hick!”

“It’s still the same book,” Maxwell said with an aborted shrug.  “What do you know about the Bible?”

Jacobi raised his eyebrows.  

He considered his years in Hebrew School two decades ago.  Years of religious education culminating in a Bar Mitzvah that was supposed to mean far more than it did.  He remembered Shabbats at dinner tables and synagogues across the Midwest.   _Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, asher bachar banu mikol haamim, natan lanu et Torah to, baruch atah Adonai, noten ha Torah._   _(Praised be the One to whom our praise is due, now and forever, we praise You, Eternal God, Sovereign of the universe: You have called us to Your service by giving us the Torah, we praise You, O God, Giver of the Torah.)_ Hungry Yom Kippurs.  Loud Purims.  Endless Passover seders.  Freezing Sukkots.

The Torah portion he recited in front of what felt like hundreds of people, from the Korach parsha, in June of 1996.  The Earth swallowed up Korach and his friends and family.  A fire consumed over 200 men.  God’s Vengeance in flame.   _Ve’esh yatze’ah me’et hashem vattochal et hachamishim umatayim ish makrivei hakketoret._ ( _A fire came forth from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who had offered up the incense._ )

That was all years ago.  Neither he nor Maxwell was religious anymore despite what their parents tried to hammer into their heads. Too rational for the Big Man in the sky.  “Uh…I remember some stuff? I remember some of my Torah portion and prayers and blessings and things like that?  Barukh ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh ha’olam, asher kidshanu bemitzvotav vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Shabbat?”  (Blessed are You, God, Ruler of the universe, who sanctified us with the commandment of lighting Shabbat candles.)

“What?” Maxwell asked, glancing over at him.  

“It’s what you say when you light the Shabbat candles.  I don’t know any of the… Jesus crap.”

“That’s too bad as he’s pretty central to that book you’re holding,” Maxwell said, nodding to the bible in Jacobi’s hand.

“It can’t be _that_ different!  I can handle it!” Jacobi said.

“You just lapsed into Hebrew,” Maxwell pointed out.

“You guys kept the Tanakh stuff!  I remember chunks of that,” he said.  “We’re fine.”

“Okay, fine,” Maxwell sighed.  “Don’t get us caught.”

“One thing before they get here: is Jesus supposed to be God or the Son of God, or what?  Because that has always confused the Hell out of me.”

Maxwell stared at him for a long moment.  She opened her mouth to answer, closed it, tried again.  “He’s the…the Trinity is…there are two schools of…” she shook her head, “There is nowhere near enough time for this.  I’ll do the talking.  You just smile and nod.”  

“…That bad?”

“Smile and nod.”

“It’s not my fault Christianity is super confusing,” Jacobi complained.

“Jacobi…” Maxwell said threateningly.

“ _Fine_ ,” Jacobi sighed, sitting back against his seat.  He kneed the glove compartment closed.  “Barukh ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh ha’olam, borei peri hagafen,” he added.  (Blessed are You, God, Ruler of the universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.)

“What?” Maxwell glanced over at him again.

“It’s what you say over the wine at Shabbat.”

“Smile.  And.  Nod.  Daniel.”

“That means if we end up in a Chinese prison, it’s your own damn fault,” Jacobi pointed out.  “I’m guilt free.”

“ _Huh_ , that would be a perfect inverse of the Honduras Incident,” Maxwell smirked at him.

“ _That was not my fault!”_ Jacobi snapped.

Before Maxwell could retort, they were at the building separating China from Mongolia.  The border patrol approached and gestured for them to roll down their window.  Both Maxwell and Jacobi managed to put on innocent faces.   They stared hard at Maxwell, studying her features.  They were looking for Emily Liston, a white woman with messy brown hair and big brown eyes, and just such a woman was sitting in front of them.

Their terribly injured state plus awful pictures might equal Jacobi and Maxwell getting into Mongolia, but the thing that would put them over the line was Maxwell’s acting.  Jacobi had seen it before, on many occasions.  At first it had been shaky, but Maxwell learned quickly and, as Jacobi had said to Xie, she could do just about anything.  Now she was as good as any SI-5 agent had ever been at worming her way out of danger.  Jacobi quickly grasped the bible with more respect now that they’d come into the guards’ view.

“Passports, please,” the man said slowly, carefully eyeing them both.

“Of course,” Maxwell said easily.  Jacobi put the bible on his lap and passed his passport to Maxwell.  She in turn gave both to the man outside the window.  “Is something wrong?”  

“We’re on the lookout for any of the rebels involved in the recent attack.  Keeping them from escaping over the border.”

“We heard about that,” Maxwell shook her head, “what a nightmare.  May God help you in your search.”  

“What was your business in China, Miss…” the second officer, a woman in her forties or so, asked, glancing at the man holding the passports.

“Banting,” he provided, flipping hers open.  He studied the woman in the photograph, comparing her to the woman in front of him.  

“Miss Banting and Mister…” another glance.

“Best.”  He closed Maxwell’s passport and opened Jacobi’s.  Again he examined the picture, holding up the passport so the photo was side-by-side with the man it depicted.

“Miss Banting and Mr. Best.”

“The Lord’s work,” Jacobi said when the guard looked at him.  

Maxwell did not betray her dismay at Jacobi breaking his “smile and nod” instructions.  

“We’re missionaries,” Maxwell provided.  “Spreading the Word and helping drug addicts in Shanghai.”

“You’re far from Shanghai,” said the woman.  

“We’ve been traveling a while.”

“And you say you’re _missionaries_?”  The man repeated incredulously. The other snickered in disbelief.  “Are you going to tell us the people you were helping beat you up like this?”

“Not everyone wants us to help,” Maxwell said with extreme seriousness.

“There are a lot of dealers out there,” Jacobi specified.

“And they beat you?” asked the second guard.

“They ganged up on us!” Jacobi said.  “I’m not even sure how many!  It’s all a little blurry!” he gestured to the goose-egg he’d gotten from the rifle butt three days ago.  He was glad the bruised half of his face was on their side, distorting his features.  

“And we’re hardly fighters!" Maxwell said, half-hysterical. There were tears in her eyes when she looked away from them.  Jacobi, who couldn’t force himself to cry, nodded solemnly and put his hand on Maxwell’s shoulder.  She held it supportively for a moment.  “But ‘The Lord Our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against Him.’  Daniel 9:9.”

“Prove it,” the woman said firmly.  

“What?” Maxwell almost snapped.

“Prove you are missionaries,” the officer clarified.  Her expression was cold, her eyes locked on Maxwell.  

“Prove it?” Maxwell’s voice was shrill, her tears becoming more intense.

“It’s okay, Elizabeth, it’s okay,” Jacobi said soothingly, playing his part.

Maxwell took a shaking breath. “It’s fine, Matt. I can do this.”  She removed his hand from her shoulder and took a deep breath.  She looked out at the road and spoke as if something was compelling her to do so.  Her voice was low and soft.  “‘The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.’”  

As she continued her fists tightened on the wheel and her tone rose, “‘...and the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died;’” on the word ‘died’ her voice, which had slowly been gaining speed and strength pitched low again, similar to the way Jacobi thought Kepler might say the word in a particularly creative threat.  “And the third part of the ships were destroyed.

“‘And the third angel sounded…’” There were tears forming in her eyes again.  She looked over at the border patrol officers, her pitch and speed rising, becoming dangerous, intense.  Maxwell the Big Bad Wolf; there was a power in her words that was enough to make the listener shiver. Jacobi fought one down.  Her tone became slow and quiet but no less powerful, “‘…and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

“‘And the name of the star is called Wormwood” she screamed the name, then went quiet again, hushed, low, and tight in her throat, “and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters…’” she trailed off as if in mourning for a moment before continuing.  

“‘And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise,’” her tone picked up again, fierce, the repetition of  “a third” like the stabbing of a knife.  

Then her voice softened, became timid, fearful, in awe, “‘And I beheld,” a pause as if overwhelmed, “And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice,’” and here she became sympathetic, loud, but gentle, as if the speaker truly pitied the beings the angel spoke of, “‘Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!’”

Then her voice spiked again, the same fierce tone that announced the previous angels, “‘And the fifth angel sounded…’” Then the soft timid tone returned, “and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.’”

“‘And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

‘And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power,’” Now Maxwell spoke in awe, her eyes wide and terrified, tears flowing silently down her cheeks in horror or sadness or just sheer inability to comprehend the image she had painted, as if she were truly seeing the bottomless pit open and its denizens spill out in front of her.  

“‘And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them,” her voice was a sorrowful whisper, pity and fear.  “...And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men….And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions….And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months…’” Tears fell in rivers down her cheeks but she still didn’t move to wipe them away, she spoke in unblinking astonishment and terror, as if she saw the terrible locusts in front of her.  

Then her tone changed again, became angrier, louder.  Her face contorted.  “‘One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter!’” she roared.  Then all at once she was finished.  Maxwell stopped her narration, breathing hard, her teeth bared, her eyes were on fire, the tears drying on her cheeks. She looked more than half insane.  Then she smiled.  The moment passed as if nothing had happened, “Revelation 8:7 through 9:12.”

There was a long moment of silence.  The border patrol officers stared at her.  The man’s eyes were wide, the woman’s face was bloodless and her mouth agape.  The man quickly, too quickly to be at ease, stumbled to the gate and yanked it open.  The woman tossed them their passports and waved them through, urging them on, away from her and away from China.  Maxwell smirked into the rear view mirror.  “Bye,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else, “idiots.”

Jacobi stared at her in disbelief.  He shook his head.  That was possibly the most insane thing he’d ever seen her do, and that included uploading her mind into AIs to deal with various cognitive problems.  Then Jacobi started to laugh, laughing harder as the border disappeared behind them.   “Holy shit, Alana!   _Holy shit!_  What the Hell was that?!” he asked, holding his bruised stomach with his good hand, the peels of laughter sending jagged, aching waves of pain through his wounds.

“Pretty much Hell,” Maxwell shrugged the shoulder on her good side.  “The Apocalypse, actually, but it’s close enough.”

Jacobi shook his head in disbelief.

“Oh, come on,” Maxwell said glancing over at him, “it wasn’t _that_ weird!  I wasn’t speaking in tongues or anything!”

“Yeah, it was _that_ weird!  Speaking in tongues would probably sound _less_ crazy!”

“Clearly you’ve never heard anyone speak in tongues.  It would sound crazier, _believe_ me ,” Maxwell said.  Jacobi wondered if she had first-hand experience listening to “tongues.”

“Was all that really _real?!”_ Jacobi asked.

“Of course not!” scoffed Maxwell.  “The world is still here and the whole thing is made up.”

“I mean, is it in the Bible?” Jacobi rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, it’s all in there,” Maxwell assured him.

 _“ Really_ _?”_ Jacobi asked, “You weren’t just bullshitting?  You’d tell me, right?”

“Those were real passages!  I actually skipped some of the description of the locusts, it just gets _soooo_ long.” She signaled and changed lanes so they were no longer behind an 18-wheeler.

Jacobi balanced the Bible on his lap and flipped through it.  He couldn’t read it, of course, but he wished he could.  For the first time in his life he was actually interested in something in the Bible that wasn’t God breaking things in the various Tanakh texts, the only time he ever payed attention in Hebrew school.

“You can’t read that,” Maxwell reminded him.

“I know,” he sighed.  “Revelation, you said?”

“Yep,” Maxwell answered, “that’s where the Bible goes completely _insane_.”

“I’m kinda sorry I missed the Jesus parts now…” Jacobi said, shaking his head.  

“No, you don’t.  Nothing I said had Jesus in it.  God in the New Testament has definitely calmed down a lot.  Old Testament God—“

“Torah God,” Jacobi corrected her, “or Tanakh God.”

“Whatever,” she shrugged.

“We did come up with all this first,” Jacobi clarified.

“The _point_ is,” said Maxwell, “He was tougher than Jesus.  Much more destruction.  He didn’t screw around with sinners.  Ordering impalements and stonings and all kinds of murder.”

“ _Burning_ fuckers alive, turning people into salt, having the earth swallow them whole, murdering first born, yeah, he was a hardass,” Jacobi agreed.

“Jesus was kind of a giant hippie.”

“What about the locusts that make you suffer for five months?  Or the fire raining from the sky?”  Jacobi asked, grinning, “There’s no way a giant hippie came up with that.”

“I knew you’d like the fire raining from the sky,” Maxwell chuckled.

“I’m a man of refined tastes,” Jacobi answered flatly.  

“Jesus wasn’t there for that.”

“Just angels and scorpion-locusts.”

“Right.  The angels trumpet and the Woes befall the Earth.  Armageddon,” Maxwell explained.  “The end of the world.”

“In fire and brimstone.”

“In fire and brimstone,” Maxwell agreed, “although I didn’t get to that part.”

“Which?  Fire and brimstone?”

“Yep, Revelation 21:8, one of Pastor Maxwell’s favorites: ‘But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.’”

“Sorcerers, huh?”

“Hermione, Ron, and Harry are _screwed_ ,” Maxwell said with a nod.  

“And _all_ the liars?”

“Almost no one is getting into heaven,” Maxwell told him.  “Especially not us.”

“Aside from whoremongering and sorcery, we hit everything on the checklist,” smirked Jacobi.  

“Oh well, it won’t be boring at least,” Maxwell grinned back.  

“It definitely won’t be boring.  And we’ll be able to hang out.”

“Yeah, that’ll be nice,” Maxwell answered.  “Whichever one of us dies first should wait in the first fire and brimstone lake for the other one.”

“And save a spot,” Jacobi agreed.  

Maxwell and Jacobi both laughed.  They had escaped death again.  They survived another end of the world.  They could laugh about it now.  Perhaps a little too madly, perhaps out of anxiety as much as relief.  Maybe Maxwell too was thinking about the bullet _inches_ from her kidney.  

“You memorized all this stuff?” He asked after a moment.

There was a pause.  Maxwell stared straight ahead as, distantly, Zamyn-Üüd formed out of the desert.  Her eyes didn’t seem to see it or the road in front of them, they were closed off, lost in some unpleasant memory, and Jacobi already felt a sting of guilt.  Maxwell never said much about her family, and Jacobi knew there was a reason.  “I had to…” she said finally.  “My parents liked to remind us of why we had to be good.   _Their_ definition of good.  They used to make us stand in this one corner of kitchen and repeat sections of the bible over and over again and…” her hands tightened on the steering wheel.  She took a deep breath, “let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.”

“Oh,” Jacobi’s heart caught, imagining Maxwell going through that, the little girl he pictured a few days ago, the one who snuck into _Titanic_ and complained about the inaccuracies.  Tiny and pigtailed and huge-eyed… and afraid of her family.   _Afraid._  Maxwell did not deserve to be afraid.  That sting of guilt became an ache.  His gut sunk.  “I shouldn't've...I’m sorry.”

Maxwell shook her head.  “They think I’m dead and they’re _glad_ .  And _I’m_ glad I never have to see them again.   _Ever._ ”  

“You don’t even have to _think_ about them,” Jacobi said.  But he knew she would.  The same way he thought about his dad, maybe even as often.  As far as he could tell, Maxwell hated her family even more than he hated his.  Before meeting Maxwell, Jacobi didn’t even think that was possible.  

“Sometimes things work out,” Maxwell said, but she hadn’t quite gotten the sadness out of her voice.

Zamyn-Üüd grew, coming into sharper focus, almost there.

“Sometimes,” Jacobi agreed.  

 


	22. Elizabeth Banting & Mattan Best; missionaries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zamyn-Üüd, Mongolia

For once things  _ were  _ working out.  

Jacobi refused to let himself even _think_ that maybe the shenanigans were done.  But maybe the ghosts of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were mercifully leaving them alone.  Maybe _On the Road to Mongolia_ was finally reaching the credits: _Starring Li Haojun as the Obnoxious Hostage.  Huang Zhonghao as The Go-Between, The Dead Guy.  Guo Namei as The Punk-Ass Kid.  Xie Yuxia as the Impossible Rebel Leader.  Liu Lijun as The Old Medic.  Daniel Jacobi as Hyun-Woo Kim, Albert Nobel, Ray Salk, Carlton Crick, Jay Jouguet, Nahele Oppenheimer, Mattan Best._ _Alana Maxwell as Kathryn Johnson, Sophia Hopper, Emily Liston, Aimee Watson, Jasmin Noether, Ellen Hamilton, Elizabeth Banting._

But he did not allow the term “high jinx” to even cross his mind.  Maxwell may have gotten them across the border by shrieking about locusts and angels, and they may have made it to Zamyn-Üüd, but they weren’t out of the woods yet.  They wouldn’t be until the Major found them...and even then they had to contend with Kepler’s sizable wrath.  Revelation God could learn a trick or two from an enraged Warren Kepler.  

There were still a few roadblocks between them and Kepler.  Neither Jacobi nor Maxwell knew Mongolian.  Neither of them could read any signs.  Maxwell cursed softly under her breath.  They had no idea where they were going, no idea what was a safe place, no idea where they could hide out.  They had no money.  They looked like two extras from Project Mayhem.  And it was 10 a.m.  Only one hour left.  

Just as the weight of the situation was falling onto Jacobi’s shoulders, he saw it out of the corner of his eye, just beside the crack in his glasses.  There was a Crucifix affixed to a door beside them.  “Maxwell, there was a cross on the door back there,” he said as they drove past. 

Maxwell had already seen it.  She slammed on the brake and backed up.  There was a large sign hanging above the door in Mongolian, Russian, Chinese, and,  _ thank God,  _ English.  The sign proclaimed they had found The Saint Julia Billiart Mission.  A mission, because Alana Maxwell and Daniel Jacobi just happened to be two of the luckiest damn sinners in the entire world.  They looked over at each other and grinned. 

“Looks like Elizabeth Banting and Mattan Best really  _ do _ have God on their side,” Maxwell said. 

“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha’olam shehecheyanu vekiymanu vehigi'anu lazman hazeh.” (“Blessed are you Lord our God, King of the Universe, who granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.”) 

“What do you say that one over?” Maxwell asked.

“Nothing.  If I’m remembering right, you can say it as a ‘thank you’ whenever something good but unusual happens, like us ending up _ not completely screwed _ .  I figured I should say some kind of prayer if we’re still doing the God thing.” 

Maxwell sighed, “We’re both a little out of our depth this time.  This Mission is Catholic.” 

“And which one were you again…?”

“Pentecostal,” Maxwell provided.

“Ah,” Jacobi said. Then, “and the difference is…?” 

Maxwell gave him a look. 

“Smile and nod?” 

“Smile and nod.” 

They parked down the street.  The car would be towed; they weren’t coming back for it.  Maxwell dropped the keys down a storm drain.  They fell into the water with a vaguely satisfying  _ plunk _ .  It seemed less like a purposeful action on Maxwell’s part and more like she just didn’t have the energy to hold onto them anymore and just let gravity win.

They staggered up to the door and Maxwell knocked.  After a few knocks the door was opened.   They were greeted by a priest in what must have been Mongolian, “Sain ban uu?” (Literally, “How do you do?” but used like “hello.”)  But the smile disappeared from his face as soon as he saw them.  He put a startled hand to his mouth.  It only made sense – in their present state, Maxwell and Jacobi were probably an unusual sight around here.  

The priest was of average height, probably in his late-50s.  He had dark umber skin, slightly wrinkled at the corners of his eyes, a man who often smiled.  His hair was short and tightly curly, mostly gray but peppered here and there with the original black.  He wore circular wire-rim glasses and Jacobi knew that Maxwell was already thinking they looked like Harry Potter’s.  From the waist up, the priest looked like he was ready to give a service, black shirt, white collar.  But he was wearing jeans and Nike sneakers.

“Nǐ shuō Zhōngwén ma? Do you speak English? ” Maxwell asked hopefully. (“Do you speak Mandarin?”) 

“Yes, yes of course,” the man’s accent was, at least to Jacobi's ears, Kenyan. “What happened to – come inside, come in, it’s freezing and you two look like you could – just, come in.” 

They were ushered inside, through the entry hall, past several doors and into what appeared to be a lounge.  A crucifix hung on the wall along with framed paintings of various religious scenes.  The Nativity.  Walking on water.  The crucifixion.  Many scenes that Jacobi’s vague understanding of Christianity did not cover: Jesus on a donkey.  Jesus raising a man from the dead.  Jesus appearing in front of a crying woman.  Jesus with some fish.  Jacobi and Maxwell were directed to a couch on the far wall facing a rather grisly portrait of Christ on the cross.

Once the priest saw the two were relatively comfortable, he walked to the right side of the room to another door.  He opened it and leaned into whatever room or hall was beyond, blocked from Jacobi’s view.  “Sister Mary!” he called trying to keep his voice calm, presumably for Maxwell and Jacobi’s sake,  “Sister Mary please bring the cold ice pack…” he turned to Jacobi and Maxwell, “we just got more, but I’m afraid they aren’t cold yet.  There’s only the one.” 

“That’s more than enough,” Maxwell said. 

the priest turned back to the door, “...and bring some tea too.  Two cups.”  He added the tea as an afterthought.  He turned quickly to Maxwell and Jacobi.  “We have lemon, English Breakfast, and green.  Which would you like?” 

“It’s fi—ow!,” Maxwell began but Jacobi stepped on her foot, cutting her off. 

“Lemon,” he said.  He really wanted something hot to drink and if they didn’t have coffee he would tolerate tea.  

The priest nodded. “Lemon please, Sister,”  he called to the mysterious, unseen Sister Mary. The priest crossed back to where they sat.  He pulled up a chair and sat in front of them, positioned between the two.  “My name is Father Joseph Chebet. You’ve managed to find your way to the St. Julia Billiart Mission and you two look like you need it.”  

“Thank God,” Maxwell said, and Jacobi thought she might actually be serious.  Not in that she was thanking God, but that she was thanking the random chaos of the universe.

“Thank God, indeed,” Father Joseph said.  “Can I ask what happened to you, Miss…?” He trailed off for Maxwell to answer.  

“Banting.  Elizabeth Banting.  And my associate is Mattan Best.” 

Father Joseph shook Maxwell’s hand.  He reached out for Jacobi’s and he felt a sinking feeling.  Here we go.  He rolled up his sleeve revealing the silver material of his artificial arm.  “I can’t shake,” he said.  

“I’m sorry, Mr. Best, I didn’t realize,” the priest said. 

Jacobi shrugged, “I forgive you.”  But he didn’t say the priest shouldn’t apologize.  Sometimes Jacobi just wanted someone to owe him.

“May I ask how you two ended up like this?” the priest asked kindly.  

“We were mugged...” Jacobi said, repeating a version of their earlier story.

“We were working in Shanghai.  A Mission there,” Maxwell provided.  

“I’ve never been, but I do know people who have worked in Shanghai,” said the priest.  

Jacobi let out a breath.  That was the best news they could hope for. Someone vaguely aware of something related to their fake story but not well enough to actually be able to poke any holes in it. 

Sister Mary emerged from the stairwell.

“Oh, whoa!” she said at the sight of them.  Jacobi thought that “whoa” might be the understatement of the year.  She had a flat American accent.  She was a small copper-skinned woman with brown eyes and impressively long lashes.  Her hair was covered by her habit, which was brown and white with a rope belt around her waist.  She didn’t drop the tea tray she was carrying but it was close.  “What happened to you guys?!” 

“They were mugged,” Father Joseph provided.  “In China.  Shanghai.” 

“It was a few days ago,” Maxwell said.  She accepted the ice pack.  Jacobi ignored it and instead drank some of the tea.  Between the two of them – mostly Maxwell with Jacobi following her lead – they crafted a believable story.  They were working with drug addicts.  They had been there a month as part of an eight-month program in countries across Asia.  They’d been in Korea before China.  They had no money to check into their hotel and needed a place to wait for help. It was a miracle that they found the cross on the Mission’s door and found safety.  Could they borrow a phone?  What was the address here?

They were passed an iPhone from Father Joseph’s pocket. Maxwell took it and sent a text to Kepler reading simply “ _ Mission” _ and the address.  She then deleted every trace of the message.  Jacobi wasn’t sure how she did it or how she did it so quickly, but when she passed the phone back to the priest, aside from her fingerprints, it was as if she hadn't touched it at all.

Maxwell lay her head on Jacobi's shoulder. Jacobi put his broken glasses back in his pocket, careful not to disturb Maxwell.  Maxwell put the ice pack to her lips and sighed with relief.

“Feel better?” Jacobi asked her.  

“No,” Maxwell said.  “But I’ll survive.  You?” 

“Same.”  There was a long pause in which they just sat in silence.  When they were left alone for a moment, Jacobi asked, “How long until extraction?” 

She passed Jacobi the ice pack. He put it over the bruise and goose-egg on his face and checked her watch.  “Half hour.” 

Jacobi groaned and leaned his head back, “He’s not going to be happy.” 

“Is he ever really happy?” Maxwell asked.  

He snorted.  “Sometimes.”  A pause in which he considered his answer.  “I think.”  

They sat in silence for a few minutes, then… 

“Well,” said Jacobi, thickly, “we aren’t dead.” 

“Yep,” said Maxwell and she winced from the pain.

Somehow they made it over the border to Zamyn-Üüd with time to spare.  There wasn’t much time, but they made it.


	23. Alana Maxwell & Daniel Jacobi; Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zamyn-Üüd, Mongolia

 

As they sat bleeding on the upholstery, mulling over the past handful of days, Kepler turned on the radio.  He flipped through channels until he found the BBC World Service.

“—Inner Mongolian city of Delberelt.  The organization, called Rénmín Zìyóu Liānméng, or, The People’s Coalition for Freedom, suffered heavy casualties, as well as inflicting many on the Chinese army.  According to Guo Namei, new spokeswoman for the Coalition, speaking directly to foreign journalists, the leader Xie Yuxia, has escaped, despite reports to the contrary in the Chinese media, which she labeled as lies.  She also noted that many Coalition members were being held in Beijing without charge after a raid by the People's Liberation Army earlier in the week.  

“Among the dead are Zhang Donghui, Li Yongming, Huang Zhonghao, former spokesman, and the two American members, Ray Salk and Emily Liston, ending the nearly week-long manhunt for the two.  Damage to Delberelt was extensive.  According to the Coalition and anonymous witnesses, the destruction was caused by both sides in an open battle.  The Chinese government claims the Coalition was entirely at fault, while military engagement there was limited to evacuation of civilians.  The PCF is labeled as a terrorist group by the Chinese government but are self-described freedom fighters, working against the authoritarian Chinese State, highlighting the dangers of government secrecy and surveillance.  For the BBC World Service, I’m Michelle Agresti, reporting from Xilinhot.”

The news went on, something about climate change impacting nomadic life in Mongolia.  Maxwell was no longer listening.

“Was that what they wanted?  The government to stop lying and spying?” Jacobi asked leaning into Maxwell.  

She shrugged.

Jacobi scoffed, “Good luck with that, guys.”  

“My guess on their motivation was closer,” Maxwell said. At least her guess of free elections related to government honesty.  Well, Jacobi’s did too, and honestly, he could make an argument that _he_ was closer – and Maxwell knew he was about to.

“No, you weren’t,” Jacobi rolled his unblackened eye, “ _I_ was.  The government spies on Falun Gong –”

Kepler chuckled from the front seat and their bickering immediately ceased.  He thumped the steering wheel as if he had heard some great joke.  “How is it that no matter how hard you two _useless idiots_ screw up, somehow you still get the job done?” Kepler asked.

“Luck, sir,” Maxwell tried.

“And an excellent commanding officer,” Jacobi added.  Maxwell gave him an incredulous expression that he ignored.  

“Kiss ass,” she muttered to him and he elbowed her in the ribs.

Kepler's bright blue eyes glanced back at them in the mirror. “Well, looks like you get to live another day.”

“Believe me, Major, we’re just as surprised as you are,” Maxwell replied.  

But they _had_ survived.  They would survive.  They would keep surviving.  Together.  They were the citizens of the end of the world.  

Not even the Apocalypse could stop them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my favorite thing I've ever written! Thank you for reading it! You can also check out [my Tumblr](http://queenofthecommunistcannibals.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to [Matt](http://drakanekurashiki.tumblr.com/) for helping me with the language, culture, and geography of China.


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